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CHARITY ENDS UP IN JEWISH LEADERS' OWN POCKETS
Posted by Buddy Macy, June 30, 2006. | |||
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This was published June 7, 2006 Gravely Imperiled, And Those Who Were Expelled Ten Months Ago Remain In Severe Need. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has announced that Israel will retreat from 95% of Judea and Samaria in order to create an independent Hamas-PLO Islamic terrorist state in the Biblical heartland of the Jewish people. This treacherous retreat will leave tiny Israel with borders that are only 10 miles wide. Even Abba Eban, the extreme left-wing former Israeli foreign minister, once called these indefensible borders "Auschwitz lines." And Golda Meir, the former Prime Minister from the socialist Labor party, once said that any Jew who supports a retreat to such borders would have to be a "traitor." For 2,000 years, millions of Jews were tortured and murdered because they did not have a Homeland in which to return. Now, the holy refuge of Israel, itself, is in grave jeopardy as never before. But most leaders of American Jewish establishment organizations not only do not raise their voices against this plan of national surrender - these Jewish leaders enthusiastically support the proposed suicidal Israeli retreats, as well as the expulsion of up to another 100,000 Jews from their G-d-given Jewish homeland...while refusing, as a whole, to assist the more than 9,000 Jewish refugees from the expulsion of last August from Gush Katif and northern Samaria. Jewish leaders with exorbitant salaries challenged If Jewish leaders need more than $200,000 per year to motivate themselves to help their fellow Jews here and in Israel, they are in the wrong "business!" For the past 25 years, prior to this past February, I had made thousands of phone calls, soliciting donations from Jewish individuals to help their fellow Jews locally, in Israel and around the world. As was the case with thousands of other solicitors throughout North America, I made these calls as a volunteer. It is time the charitable Jewish public confront the leaders of American Jewish organizations, including the executive directors and other professionals of the Jewish Federations, under the auspices of UJC (United Jewish Communities), and question the appropriateness of accepting large salaries while performing the work of charity: salaries that are paid from charitable donations. Upon completing my research, I have determined that there are more than 40 American-based Jewish organizations in which the top leader has received $200,000 or more per year in total compensation (TC). Listed below are the names of the heads of various Jewish non-profit organizations who have received more than $250,000 in TC for the fiscal year ending on the date provided:
Upon reviewing these large salaries, one might argue that they are much less than could be obtained from working in the private sector, and that they are lower than those paid at other non-profit organizations. My response to these arguments is that the salaries should be viewed from a moral perspective, one that embraces the very spirit and intent of the mitzvah of tzedakah. Is it moral to gain wealth from the charitable gifts of others (that were to a large degree solicited by unpaid volunteers)? Would the donors have given their gifts if they knew of the large amounts of money that were to go to the salaries of the top professionals? In addition, it is my contention that the relatively large salaries of Jewish leaders that are generated from small, medium and large charitable donations, encourage the recipients of that compensation to maintain the status quo, whether consciously or unconsciously. It can be assumed that individuals making 3,4,5 and even 7 hundred thousand dollars annually, wish to retain their jobs. Thus, they are more likely than not to avoid controversy, and to discourage dissent and other original and creative thought. In regard to Israel, it has been the case since the creation of the Jewish State that American Jewish charitable organizations tow the Israeli Government line, no matter how obviously misguided, immoral and self-destructive it appears to be. Any individual or group that challenges that policy takes the risk of being ostracized, or worse. While the top Jewish leadership in North America has become very comfortable financially, the expelled Jews from Gush Katif and northern Samaria continue to suffer tremendously, ten months after their expulsions from their homes and land. And, the looming expulsions of up to 100,000 more Jews under Olmert's "disengagement" turned "convergence" turned "consolidation" turned "re-alignment" plan, would place these Israeli citizens in horrendous conditions, while putting the State of Israel's very existence into serious question. Perhaps the leaders would have spoken out on behalf of their suffering brethren and would be speaking out against Olmert's plan of national suicide, had they not had so much to lose. Hoping and praying for justice for the more than 9000 Jewish refugees, and for the prevention of suffering of another 60,000 to 100,000 of our fellow Jews in Israel,
Published June 9, 2006 Two days ago I sent out a letter "exposing" the salaries of specific American Jewish leaders. Since that time, I have received quite a few emails in response to my report/commentary. The vast majority are extremely positive, though that had been expected, as my long list of email addresses is skewed towards like-minded individuals. However, I did receive four emails that are critical of my writing. Of the four, two were personal in nature, and two were in defense of the salaries of the leaders. I find those four replies quite fascinating, not for what they include, but for what they are missing. None addressed the issue of helping the Jewish refugees who are suffering tremendously, ten months after being kicked out of their homes, and from their land. And, none of the critical emails included anything about the future expulsion of up to 100,000 Jews, should Mr. Olmert, G-d forbid, have his way. I hope my email has sparked discussions and communications in the United States and in Israel -- not about whether my "attacks" were warranted, or about who or what I will "attack" next -- no, I hope my email has encouraged those in positions to effect positive change in Israel (which, by the way, is everyone of you who received the email), to have discussions with others and act, together, to end the suffering of our fellow Jews in Israel, and to prevent Mr. Olmert from executing his expulsion plan; one that would produce unimaginable suffering of our People. To the individuals I mentioned by name, and to all of the professionals and lay leaders of Jewish organizations: This is your moment to shine. We, Jews, look to you to help our fellow brothers and sisters in Israel, who, up until now, have for the most part been ignored and abandoned by their brethren. We rely upon you to end their suffering, and to prevent the suffering of tens of thousands more of our flesh and blood. Shabbat shalom,
Published June 19, 2006 A response to my email to Ronald Lauder Dear Ms. Bodner, Mr. Robinson and Mr. Lauder, Thank you for your June 12, 2006 response to my email. It has been copied and pasted, in its entirety, at the bottom of this email. Ms. Bodner, you wrote: "...But first the facts. Of every dollar it raises, JNF sends 81% to its programs. Only 19% goes to cover administrative costs and fundraising expenses. Never satisfied, JNF [ed. Jewish National Fund] is working to bring those costs in even lower. Ms. Bodner: From the 2004 JNF Annual Report, within the "Your Dollars at work in Israel" section, the following projects and percentages of dollars are listed: Land and Community Development - 24%; Tourism - 10%; Research - 3%; Water Resources and Rehabilitation - 27%; Education - 6%; Security - 9%; and Ecology and Forestry - 21%. The good thing is, the individual percentages add up to 100%. The bad thing is, the 19% for administrative costs and fundraising expenses is not included in that 100%. If "only" 19% goes to administrative and fundraising, shouldn't you have been "actually proud" to have it included in the section, re-entitled, "A Full 81%* of Your Dollars at work in Israel"? *Perhaps, less than 80%, after deducting the money spent on Zionist education in the U.S., mentioned above. On the JNF website (www.jnf.org), within the section entitled, "A Message from Ronald S. Lauder - #2 in a Series," is written the following: "I have traveled all over the world, seen great cities and mesmerizing landscapes, but there is no sight more breathtaking than the Negev desert. Here the history of our people shouts from every mountain and the hope for our people's future beckons from every valley." With all due respect, Mr. Lauder, "the history of our people shouts from every mountain" and hill in Judea and Samaria (where lies Joseph's Tomb in Nablus, the cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, and the source of the Dead Sea Scrolls), from where you and other extremely wealthy North American and Israeli businessmen support the expulsion of 60,000 to 100,000 of our fellow Jews. More from, "A Message from Ronald S. Lauder - #2 in a Series": "Haruv sits on its temporary site while its permanent home beckons from a hilltop, waiting for the infrastructure to be created. Residents live in temporary caravillas, and work and go to school in nearby Kiryat Gat." Mr. Lauder: Don't you find this description to be a slight bit smug and callous? The "temporary caravillas" are mentioned in passing, as if they are resort homes suitable for a more-than-comfortable existence. How about including some of the reality behind those tiny, cardboard-thin shelters, that sometimes lack electricity and running water? And, why no mention of the Negev trailer camps for mostly former farmers? Also, what about the 113 families who, ten months since their expulsions from Gush Katif, are still living in hotels, guest houses and tent sites? Regarding the work and school nearby: You neglect to inform the reader of the 50% unemployment rate among the expellees. Have all of the adult residents living in the temporary caravillas at Haruv found work? You fail, too, to mention that many of the Jewish refugee children have attended three or four schools since their odyssey began last August, and that a significant number of them suffer from traumatic and post-traumatic stress symptoms as a result of being physically removed from their homes and communities more than 10 months ago.
And, in case you do not trust one source:
Back to Jodi Bodner's email:
Additionally, JNF raised millions for the evacuees from Gush Katif and helped clear land for hothouses, funded temporary homes and together with its partners is moving them into new communities so they can rebuild their lives. and Ronald Lauder's "A Message from Ronald S. Lauder - #2 in a Series" from www.jnf.org: "Jewish National Fund has embarked on Blueprint Negev Ms. Bodner: You wrote in your email to me, "You are right to demand oversight." In response to your encouragement, I request the following from you, Mr. Robinson and Mr. Lauder:
Ms. Bodner, Mr. Robinson and Mr. Lauder: The Jewish refugees from Gaza and northern Samaria are suffering tremendously, more than ten months after the expulsion from their homes and land. The worldwide Jewish community holds you, in addition to the other major Jewish organizations, responsible for their welfare. In addition, we would hold you and the other major American Jewish organizations responsible, should Mr. Olmert expel up to another 100,000 Jews from their homes and land. I look forward, with great interest, to receiving the requested documentation, information and written vows of "non-benefiting" by the eleven gentlemen mentioned above. Most sincerely,
Below is Ms. Bodner's entire response to my email, and my email to which she responded: Dear Mr. Macy, [ed. received 6/12/06] |
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NEW YORK TIMES: STOP ME BEFORE I EDITORIALIZE AGAIN!
Posted by Barry Rubin, June 30, 2006. |
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As if an article seriously discussing whether Iran's president had actually called for Israel's destruction, and a vicious review showing anti-Israel bias by Jerusalem bureau chief Steven Erlanger[1] weren't enough, the New York Times had another silly editorial on June 17. Basically its argument goes like this: Just because Hamas and Fatah are engaged in a near-civil war while trying to show how each can kill more Israelis and make more radical statements is no reason to conclude that there is not a chance for real progress in peace negotiations. The editorial also repeats the old, and by now should be discredited, idea that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is so globally important that it shapes every other issue in the Middle East, and indeed to a large extent in the whole world. The Los Angeles Times recently said the same thing, warning that somehow the U.S. position in Iraq depended on a resolution of this issue, without explaining how this made any sense.[1] In other words, just because your potential negotiating partner has no effective government, is ruled by genocidal terrorists, launches dozens of missiles at you, and demands you be wiped off the face of the earth is no reason not to believe that they are unready to make peace. The problem at this point is that rather than analyze the problem in serious intellectual and political terms, there is an obsession that: a) this issue is the core of everything that happens in the Middle East and of terrorism, and that b) it can be fairly quickly resolved peacefully. This belief is not subject to any rational consideration. Well, it should be. By the way, in good Times fashion, Israel's building a fence and defining its claimed border is equated to "armed thugs" fighting it out. Remember, Israel can never be portrayed as better than the Palestinians in Times editorials. Here is a wonderful example of the Times' idea of an evenhanded approach, "Rockets are raining down again on innocent Israeli and Palestinian civilians, inflaming passions on both sides." In addition, the Times accepts the idea that much or most international terrorism arises from the Palestinian issue. This sort of leaves out the experience of the past five years that revolutionary Islamist Jihadism is the cause (remember Usama bin Ladin?). Of course, the Palestinian issue is one motivating factor in international terrorism but this is not the 1970s of PLO airplane hijacking. I would put the Palestinian issue as no more than 10 percent of the issue, and that is probably an exaggeration. What is also fascinating, and typical, in the Times editorial is the lecturing of political groups in a tone so far removed from the real world. It is nice that the Times calls on Hamas to recognize Israel and on Arab states to pressure them to do so. But does anyone believe either of these things are going to happen? What should be done if the targets of the Times' "good advice" do not pay attention? (Listen, Mr. Stalin, why don't you stop gobbling up Eastern Europe? Hey, Mr. Hitler, be nice to Czechoslovakia!) Here is the point at which serious policy advice must come into it. But the Times does not want to engage in this practice, partly because the writers of its editorials seem to have little sense of how strategy and policy work, also because they do not want to draw the logical conclusion: there is no chance of a peace agreement, and the world should support Israel in defending itself against terrorists and extremists. What is even more shocking is the Times' lack of knowledge about the issues on which it is writing. It urges Hamas to accept the Beirut declaration, which, the newspaper is apparently unaware, demands that Israel admit all Palestinians who want to live there. In other words, the Beirut declaration--which Hafiz al-Asad's Syria and Saddam Hussein's Iraq had no trouble accepting--is the old phased formula for destroying Israel, not making real peace with it. It is equally amazing that the Times accepts at face value the old myth of Arab state devotion to the Palestinians. Of course, it says, no one expects that Arab states will abandon the Palestinians to their financial plight. In fact, they have done so for the last 12 years. Only five percent of aid to the Palestinian Authority came from all Arab lending institutions and states, putting the oil-rich countries collectively right up there with Norway. The Times has not learned that the Palestinians are not the center of Arab world considerations. Finally, it is amusing that, as credentials giving it the right to ask Arab states for a favor, the Times cites its own frequent criticism of Israel. But clearly no matter how often the Times bashes Israel, Arab states are not going to be impressed. How about a dose of reality and real fairness from what thinks of itself as the world's leading newspaper? Notes: 1. Previous E-Blogs * New York Times: Stop Me Before I Editorialize Again: June 30, 2006 |
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The New York Times
There's a barely concealed wish among many old Mideast hands these days to just walk away from the steadily deteriorating Israeli-Palestinian situation. Armed thugs from Fatah are fighting it out with armed thugs from Hamas. Israel is building unilateral fences and defining unilateral borders. If the two sides do not really want to negotiate with each other, the argument goes, there's nothing much outsiders can do to help. That temptation to walk away needs to be strongly resisted. As bad as things are now, they can get a whole lot worse, and almost certainly will if the outside world averts its attention. Already, rockets are raining down again on innocent Israeli and Palestinian civilians, inflaming passions on both sides. And when those passions explode, the deadly consequences won't be limited to Israelis and Palestinians alone. They never have been in the past, and are even less likely to be in a world of satellite television, ubiquitous Internet access, multinational terrorism and increasingly long-range missiles. Further, there is something very important that the outside world, particularly the Arab and Islamic world, can do to help. It can make plain to the Hamas-led government of the Palestinian Authority that if it means to become the legitimate international voice of the Palestinian people, and a true government in the community of nations, it will have to accept the minimal international ground rules already in place. These include renouncing terrorism, acknowledging Israel's existence as a sovereign nation and abiding by formal agreements previously signed by lawful Palestinian negotiators. Those are ground rules that have already been accepted by Egypt and Jordan and by the Arab League as a whole in its 2002 Beirut peace initiative. They need to be accepted by Hamas, but not as some kind of ideological concession. Hamas must see them as an admission ticket tithe real world, a necessary rite of passage in the progression from lawless opposition to a lawful government. Hamas has repeatedly heard this demand from the United States, Europe and Israel, and has repeatedly ignored it, even when it has been backed by halts in vitally needed economic assistance. Hearing it from Arab and Islamic neighbors, in the form of friendly persuasion, would be harder for Hamas to dismiss. It also could prove easier for Hamas to accommodate. This page has not hesitated to call on Washington, as Israel's most important ally, to encourage Israeli leaders to keep the door open to an eventual negotiated peace. In the same spirit, we call on the leaders of Arab and Islamic states to speak firmly and constructively to Hamas. No one expects these countries to remain silent about the sufferings of the Palestinian people or abandon them to their now desperate financial plight. But with support comes leverage, and true friends of the Palestinian people need to start using that leverage to talk straight with Hamas. Barry Rubin is Director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, Interdisciplinary Center university. His co-authored book, Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography, (Oxford University Press) is now available in paperback and in Hebrew. His latest book, The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East, was published by Wiley in September. Prof. Rubin's columns can now be read online at: http://gloria.idc.ac.il/columns/column.html. |
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ON THE STRIP: WHERE TO GO FROM GAZA?
Posted by National Review Online (NRO), June 30, 2006. |
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An NRO Symposium
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As Gaza flares up with tension, violence, and rumors of worse, National Review Online gathered a group of Mideast experts asking them: Can anything be done to prevent more violence? Is there anything constructive to be done -- and by whom? Michael Freund Less than a year after pulling out of Gaza, Israeli forces are back again, hunting down Palestinian terrorists and attempting to rescue one of their kidnapped comrades. The only thing surprising about the return to Gaza is that it took this long to occur. Ever since the withdrawal, the Palestinians have been firing rockets on a near-daily basis into southern Israel, making life unbearable for tens of thousands of Israeli citizens. Israel's retreat created a vacuum, which al Qaeda and other Islamist terror groups quickly set out to fill, paving the way for Hamas to take control. The flow of weapons smuggled in from Egypt has soared, and Gaza has rapidly become the perfect launching pad for enemies of Israel and the West. At this point, the best thing Israel can do is to stay put in Gaza, flushing out the terrorists while creating and patrolling permanent security zones adjoining the frontier, such as the Philadelphia Corridor along the Gaza-Egypt border. Only by maintaining an enduring physical presence in the area can Israel ensure that Gaza does not become a hotbed of fundamentalist strife. And only by reasserting its control can Israel provide its citizens with the security they rightly deserve. -- Michael Freund served as deputy director of communications under former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. He is currently a syndicated columnist for the Jerusalem Post. Dore Gold When I used to spend a great deal of time with Ariel Sharon between 2000 and 2003, he would always say to me: "Never put yourself in a position that you only have two choices when you are under a threat: going to war or doing nothing." But that is precisely Israel's situation today. Israel's southern town of Sdeirot and the Western Negev have been struck with over 500 Qassam rockets -- in a blatant escalation of unprovoked attacks since Israel withdrew lock-stock-and barrel from the Gaza Strip. Clearly this escalation did not come about because of some political "grievance" against Israel due to its Gaza presence, which had been removed, but rather from the sense of victory that Hamas and the forces of jihad sensed from Israel's decision to pull out last August. In the meantime, the Gaza Strip has become a new center for global jihadi groups including Hezbollah and al Qaeda. The situation cannot be alleviated then by diplomatic initiatives, and the illusory hope that internal Hamas led by Ismail Haniyya is a potential peace partner if he and his colleagues break away from Khaled Mashaal's branch of Hamas in Damascus. Gaza Hamas, in fact, expressed its regrets for the loss of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and is cut from the same ideological cloth as Hamas overseas. Additionally, deterrence of terrorist groups hiding in densely populated areas does not work; the civilian casualties that can be caused are simply untenable. There is no stable deterrence balance when there is no responsible government on the other side. But there is what strategists used to call deterrence by denial: cutting off the enemy's capabilities. In this sense, stabilization will only be achieved by isolating Gaza, and preventing its further reinforcement from the supporters of global jihad, whether by suitcases full of cash or Katyusha rockets. Syria must be made to understand that it will pay a price if it continues to harbor the Hamas leadership and to reinforce the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. These are hard but necessary measures. Diplomacy should press Egypt to be more forceful in blocking the Sinai-Gaza border. Indeed, increased Egyptian responsibility in Gaza and Jordanian responsibility in the West Bank may be the only long-term effective option instead of the Palestinians' own failed political system, particularly if the Hamas regime collapses. In the meantime, it is necessary to recognize the errors of the past that occurred with Gaza disengagement and not just repeat them again in the West Bank. -- Dore Gold was the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations in 1997-99. His book, Hatred's Kingdom exposed Saudi Arabia's financial ties to Hamas and international terrorist groups. Emanuele Ottolenghi The flare-up in Gaza was to be expected, given that the Palestinian leadership lost yet another opportunity, after the Gaza disengagement, to halt its self-destructive course. Ultimately, there are two ways to read the current situation and interpret its causes. One claims that the 2000-01 attempt to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict failed because there is no genuine Palestinian partner for Israel and there are not going to be chances for peace in this generation. Given that conflict is inherent to the Palestinian-Israeli arena, disengagement was meant to create militarily, demographically, and politically more defensible lines for Israel and allow Israel to fight more effectively in a protracted conflict. If this interpretation is correct, the latest flare-up in Gaza confirms the need for Israel to redeploy and disengage from the Palestinians, given their hopeless devotion to Israel's destruction. The second view claims that the violence erupted after the Camp David failed summit in the summer of 2000 is a hiccup in a historical process that will eventually lead to peace. In this light, Israel's unilateral disengagement thwarts the chances of meaningful negotiations because it rewards Palestinian rejectionism and its violence. The latest flare-up, in this light, is evidence that Palestinian terrorism was emboldened by Israel's withdrawal and seeks to provoke Israel to further undermine its deterrence. In this sense, the Gaza disengagement appears a failure, rather than a success. Whatever the reading, Israel fell in a trap by going into Gaza with massive force. Upping the ante with targeted killings would prove more effective because it leaves the option open to invade later. Threatening to kill Hamas ministers if the kidnapped soldier is not returned would have been a better measure. The invasion allows the Palestinians yet again to play victims in the stage of world opinion. -- Emanuele Ottolenghi teaches Israel studies at Oxford University. Daniel Pipes The Bush administration sees the United States at war with Islamic radicalism; has not the time come for it to see other theaters of this same war -- Russia's with the Chechen rebels, India's with the Kashmiri insurgents, Israel's with Hamas -- as we see our own, and work for the defeat of the Islamists? Instead, in the Israeli case at least, Washington urges understanding, restraint, compromise, management of the problem, and other half-hearted and doomed remedies. The result is an ever more exhilarated and aggressive Palestinian population that believes victory within reach. Washington's mistaken approach goes back to the Oslo accords of 1993, when Yasser Arafat seemingly closed the existential conflict in writing to Bill Clinton that "The PLO recognizes the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security." But Arafat's assurances were fraudulent and the Arab effort to eliminate Israel remains very much in place. Israel, with U.S. support, must defeat this foul ambition. That implies inflicting a sense of defeat on the Palestinians, and winning their resignation to the permanent existence of a Jewish state in the Holy Land. Only then will the violence end. -- Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and a prize-winning columnist. Danielle Pletka In the last week, Hamas has kidnapped two Israelis, a soldier and a teenage settler, and threatens to kill both unless its demands are met. The al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, affiliated with "moderate" Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party, announced it could now manufacture chemical and biological weapons. Can anything be done to prevent the use of those weapons and brake accelerating Palestinian violence? The answer isn't as complicated as many suggest. Hamas and Fatah are terrorist organizations and they must be treated as terrorists, and crushed with all means necessary. They are no more entitled to violence than al Qaeda. Foreign Ministers from London, Washington, and Cairo have bleated that diplomacy must be given a chance, but President Bush has inveighed repeatedly against negotiating with terrorists. And what of the Palestinian people? Let us remember, they elected Hamas. Perhaps next time they will choose more wisely. We can help them by immediately ending fruitless efforts to appeal to "moderates" like Abbas (who was useless in his long stewardship of the PA), wholeheartedly support Israeli actions to eliminate terrorists, and throw our political and financial support behind the idea of new Palestinian political leaders more interested in serving the needs of their people than they are in killing and kidnapping. -- Danielle Pletka is the vice president for foreign- and defense-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Nissan Ratzlav-Katz Once upon a time, the Palestine Liberation Organization would send out terrorists under the operational name Black September, so as to maintain "plausible deniability" for actions that might not play well in the West. http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_1967to1991_munich.php Today, however, the freely elected Islamists governing the Palestinian Authority feel no need even to use pseudonyms. Hamas leaders announced that the recent assault on an IDF base in pre-1967 Israel, in which two Israelis were killed and one taken hostage, was the action of Hamas "militants," of which they had no knowledge. Yet, Hamas is publicly and officially dedicated to destroying Israel and killing Jews. Furthermore, in the ten months since Israel unilaterally withdrew its military and 8,000 civilians from the Gaza region, PA-based groups, including Hamas, have fired more than 1,000 rockets at Israeli cities and have carried out several other terrorist attacks. Given this, future violence can only be prevented by eliminating the causes of current violence. And those causes are the Arab terrorist groups running the PA -- Hamas and Fatah. After more than a decade of concessions and dialogue, Israel must now destroy in order to create -- destroy the terrorists' autonomy in order to create a chance for peace. -- Nissan Ratzlav-Katz is opinion editor of www.IsraelNationalNews.com. Saul Singer> Palestinian terrorism will stop when the international community decides to hold the Palestinian leadership fully accountable for its aggression and to vocally support Israel's right to self defense. The U.N. Security Council, which has frequently condemned Israeli defensive actions, has not condemned the firing of hundreds of missiles against Israeli civilians. A U.N. resolution unequivocally condemning Palestinian terrorism and affirming Israel's rights under Article 51 of the U.N. charter, followed if necessary by the threat of sanctions, would induce the Palestinians to advance their interests by other means. In addition, the U.S. and Israel should not just speak of the need for two states, Israel and Palestine, but of the true obstacle to implementing that vision: the continuing Arab refusal to accept a Jewish state in this land. If the Arab states truly accepted the two-state solution, why did they recently fight tooth and nail against welcoming Israel and Palestine into the International Committee of the Red Cross? Why do they foment boycotts and rabid anti-Semitism? Why do the leaders of states that are ostensibly at peace with Israel refuse to visit here? And why does the international community accept such behavior without comment? -- Saul Singer is editorial-page editor of the Jerusalem Post and author of Confronting Jihad: Israel's Struggle and the World After 9/11. |
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THE ROOTS OF ISLAMISM
Posted by Israela Goldstein, June 30, 2006. |
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This excerpt below says it well. The article was written by Michael Gove and it appeared The only change I would make is to not limit Islamism's desire to "cleanse" so-called "Muslim lands"(which intention includes Europe). They wish to "cleanse" the world. |
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From the Hamas killers in Gaza to Hizballah terrorists in Lebanon and Islamist fighters across southeast Asia, there is a ruthlessness in the selection of civilian targets reinforced by a willingness to embrace suicide bombing, a belief that Western influence needs to be cleansed from Muslim lands and a desire to see a narrow and highly politicized form of Islam imposed across the Muslim world. Islamism is not Islam in arms, it is a political creed which perverts Islam, just as fascism degraded nationalism and communism betrayed socialism. Islamism appeals to that part of the human soul which has always been capable of being drawn to revolution, violence, and the exaltation of the self through membership of the elect. Islamists believe in the re-ordering of society to secure total submission to a narrow, puritan, and fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. They are conducting a civil war within the Islamic world designed to overthrow existing regimes, which they consider to be unforgivably apostate, and replace them with a single and unified Muslim state, the restored caliphate. Islamists believe that the sanctity and culture of Muslim lands are menaced and defiled by Western influences, from capitalism to feminism, which have to be eradicated. |
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INFILTRATORS AND DISSENTERS; ARABS TOYING WITH ISRAEL; MIDDLE EAST ASSESSED
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 30, 2006. |
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DEALING WITH INFILTRATORS The Government can infiltrate the patriotic movement by offering jobs. Betrayers save their bodies that way, even though they lose their souls. The greedy can get Knesset seats for becoming leaders, actually, misleaders, of the movement. They become officials of the Yesha Council. Their questions or radical proposals give some of the infiltrators away. Their usefulness to the government ends when they become ostracized. What about the reverse, infiltrating the government, to find out or get proof about its dirty tricks? Can't do it. Anyone joining a security agency gets thoroughly investigated. People with patriotic courage are known. Attempts would be severely punished. Sometimes people do ascertain facts about government deceit. Unfortunately, the media cooperates with the government in ignoring the scandal or hastens to shut off coverage of it. After all, the Prime Ministers and other leading personalities of the Kadima Party are popularly known to be crooks, but manage to avoid serious punishment. The police claim insufficient public interest in prosecution, investigation drags on or omits the more promising leads, the courts contend insufficient evidence, and the media downplays it. This is what has been happening to people who overheard PM Olmert's orders to beat Jews. The Left has things under firm control (personal source). Dissenters are harassed. Thus Nadia Matar is charged with insulting a public servant, Mr. Bassi, who brutally deported Jews from Yesha. She likened him (I think aptly) to the Judenrat of 1942 (ghetto officials who turned Jews over for deportation). The judge suggested the prosecutor withdraw the indictment, because the case is weak. Defense counsel proved that insulting officials is common in Israel but the Left isn't prosecuted; this prosecution is discriminatory. Among the protestors outside was a Nobel Prize winner, who decried the oppression of free speech in Israel. The media did not cover the trial The trial is rescheduled for September. This defendant is fortunate that the government spared her the common fate of dissidents, kept in jail while the cases are postponed. This deprives them of livelihood and freedom. Frequent prosecution costs them legal fees (letter from Ruth Matar and some observations from another source and from me). WHO CONTROLS GOVERNMENT? Theoretically, Israel and the US are democracies. Actually, a ruling elite and lobbyists control. In Israel, the government arbitrates almost everything and minutely. Israel lacks a Bill of Rights. Its whole justice system is political and ideological. Liberal notions of using the government to rectify injustices turn into pork barrel legislation and welfare mentality. Nor do government decrees resolve problems well. There is too much legislation, and too little time to consider it. Bills attract loopholes by inadvertence and by design. Some are peculiar, such as the unlimited Medicare coverage of physical therapy if done only in a hospital-related facility. The US tax code is tens of thousands of pages long! HOW IRAN DEALS WITH THE U.S. The US gleans intelligence from Iranian TV broadcasts. For examples, the Iranian intelligence minister stated that Iran uses double agents to "keep them busy and fool them" in America. Iran's chief nuclear negotiator stated that Iran negotiated with Europe in order to stall sanctions while completing components of its nuclear program. Foreign Min. Mottaki said, "We emphasize the peaceful nature of our nuclear weapons... I mean... of our nuclear power plant." Iran's chief of staff said his military plans "to put America in its place," inasmuch as "America's military power is greatly overestimated." We would be wise not to ignore their outlook (Steven Stalinsky of MEMRI, NY Sun, 6/14, p.5). Iran means to challenge the US militarily. It prepares for war, and we prepare for politics. Our enemies appear to be cleverer than we. CHECKPOINT VALUE PROVED AGAIN Two Jewish high-school girls were trying to hitch a ride near Shilo, in the Territories. Armed Arabs got out of their car and began forcing the girls in. One girl managed to run away. Then an IDF officer came along, and the Arabs tried to get away. The officer called up for an ad hoc checkpoint; it trapped the kidnappers' car. The Army has warned Israelis not to hitchhike, but people act irresponsibly. On the other hand, bus service out there is scant (Arutz-7, 6/15). ARABS TOYING WITH ISRAEL Israel boasted that it sent a serious threat to Hamas leaders, and got Hamas to stop firing rockets at Israel. There was a brief lull, just long enough to elicit such a boast. Then the rocket crews resumed launches. Hamas claimed it would try a ceasefire, if Israel stopped targeting its commanders. Other terrorist organizations, however, refused to stop firing their rockets (Arutz-7, 6/15). Some of their rockets come from Hamas. Hamas claims to have clean hands, but get other groups to do its dirty work. ABSENCE OF DEMOCRATIC FRANKNESS After the Defense Minister of Israel threatened escalation against the P.A., IMRA asked his office whether he had sole authority to follow through or required approval of the PM or the Security Cabinet. His representative told IMRA to ask the Office of the PM. The Office of the PM asked IMRA to put the question in writing, and it might reply. It replied that it may not answer (IMRA, 6/15). The government often responds to a simple question that way. An answer would reveal that the government is dissembling or bluffing, so the government just doesn't answer. ABBAS & INTERNATIONAL LAW Abbas claims that the Israeli presence in the Territories began illegally in 1967, he says, and remains illegal. He concludes that Israel should withdraw (IMRA, 6/15). In 1967, Egyptian and Jordanian invaders illegally seized the Territories. The world did recognize their rule there as legitimate, though neither did it mind it. From there, Egypt made war on Israel, and Jordan bombarded Israel. In self- defense, Israel fought back and ended up in charge of the Territories. Nothing illegal about that. There still isn't a legitimate sovereign government in place, and the locals are at war with Israel, so Israeli military presence remains needed. As for the Israeli civilians, settlement is required under the Palestine Mandate, which remains the governing legal document. PRESBYTERIANS: RELIGIOUS OR RADICAL? Since a surprise move two years ago, the Presbyterian Church has been divesting from corporations that operate in Israel, because Israel controls part of the Territories. This is not socially progressive but pro-Islamist out of naivete or antisemitism. Likewise, some Presbyterian leaders went to Lebanon, and praised Iranian-directed Hizbullah, which has murdered thousands of people. This type of radicalism has caused members to divest from the collection box and from membership. The church also funds fiercely pro-Palestinian (Arab) committees, sends representatives to Palestinian advocacy conferences, and has written obsequious congratulatory letters to the terrorist leaders of Hamas on their recent election victory. Simultaneously, the church remains remarkably docile on profoundly serious issues such as genocide in Darfur, the Iranian nuclear buildup and mistreatment of Christians in communist and Muslim countries.? "Presbyterian delegates also take leadership roles in organizations that blame the U.S. and capitalism in general for most of the world's catastrophes. The 2004 manifesto of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, for instance, went on about America's 'imperialism,' 'domination' and 'massive threats to life.'" The same activists make non-factual comparisons between S. Africa and Israel. Now that Hamas runs the P.A. and a lunatic runs Iran, the attempt to blame everything on Israel and the US becomes more embarrassing (and dangerous). Problem countries make their own problems from their preaching of hatred. Almost two dozen presbyteries formally requested ending divestment. The leadership stubbornly seeks to stymie opposition by parliamentary maneuver (Prof. Steven Plaut, 6/15). ISRAEL DID IT! AGAIN The IDF protected a convoy of three trucks bringing about 950 M-16 rifles to Abbas' Presidential Guard (Prof. Steven Plaut, 6/15). A Guard commander said that the rifles would not be used against fellow Arabs but only against Israelis, and already have been (IMRA, 6/16). Israel made this mistake, before. Olmert has no excuse for doing it again. At least Israel did not pay for the rifles. THE COURAGEOUS & THE COWARDLY For many years, Barry Chamish has defied the Israeli Establishment and exposed some of its crimes against democracy there. He has more than his share of courage. However, he began to have "accidents." He felt it would be wiser to put some distance between himself and Israel. Now in North America, he lectures about what most people otherwise don't hear. His Christian audiences have been enthusiastic. He doesn't get many Jewish audiences, any more. He thinks they are afraid or Establishment-minded (Chamish, 6/15). EUROPEANS TIRED OF PROVIDING COVER FOR TERRORISTS Israel abandoned the Gaza-Sinai crossing. International monitors came, but the P.A. had the final say in what to do and whom and what to stop at the border. The P.A. has not been inspecting baggage coming in from Egypt and has allowed Hamas ministers of government to bring in millions of dollars. The monitors feel useless, and have threatened to quit (IMRA, 6/15). They were being played for fools. They should have realized that at the outset. Too much credence is placed in the good faith of the Arabs, who thwart genuine inspection. Such is the fate of arrangements that leave power in the hands of jihadist Arabs. The Arabs know only the language of force. FOCUS OF ISRAELI DEFENSE MINISTER While rockets fall on his hometown of Siderot, Israel, Defense Min. Peretz reserves the Army against "illegal" outposts. He ordered the IDF to prepare a plan to evacuate the most defiant ones within two weeks. He is intent, he said, on upholding law and order (IMRA, 6/15). What law and order is in Israel, where the Arabs and the Left do pretty much what they want, and the religious and the Right are prosecuted for objecting? What kind of law has a government that abandons the national patrimony? Instead of using the Army to defend the country, he uses it to destroy the country. Peretz has his priorities mixed up. ARABS WANT TO SEE EIFEL TOWER A Paris court sentenced 25 Muslims from Algeria and Morocco for plotting to blow up the Eifel Tower and other places. They wanted to see the Tower fall. That was supposed to be a blow for the Chechen Muslims in Russia (Prof. Steven Plaut, 6/15). What does France have to do with Russia? The Muslims are out to wreck whatever they can of civilized areas, until they can take them over and into 7th century Islam. OLMERT PLAN THREATENS JERUSALEMITES PM Olmert announced intent to turn over certain Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem to the P.A.. He rationalizes that doing so would improve Israeli security by keeping a higher ratio of Jews in the City. What actually would result: (1) Fearing oppressive Muslim rule, the Arabs of those neighborhoods are crowding into the rest of the city. Therefore, the Arab proportion remains the same. (2) Letting the P.A. terrorists into those neighborhoods enables them to put the Jewish neighborhoods within rifle range, as well as make them easier targets for mortars. Therefore, Jewish security deteriorates. The plan's real purpose is to appease anti-Zionists (IMRA, 6/16 from Caroline Glick). That includes Jewish anti-Zionists, which the far leftists are and the other leftists are becoming. When the objects of appeasement hate the appeasers, as the anti-Zionists do, and want to conquer them, as the Muslim Arabs do, then appeasement does not satisfy hate-filled aggressors. It merely weakens the appeasers' chance for survival. Olmert's plan is criminally suicidal for his country. Specifying the Arab neighborhoods in advance enabled the Arabs in them to frustrate the immediate purpose of the plan. Where is the planning in that? The plan should have been to make the Jewish population secure by enacting, say, a five-year elimination of Jerusalem residency permits of Arabs, with compensation for their property. At least those non-citizens should be denied the welfare and travel benefits of citizens. Then living in Jerusalem would not be as coveted, though they do prefer Israeli rule. They prefer it as a whole. Enough of them, however, prefer al-Qaida to make the whole lot of them a security risk. Israel doesn't understand that, for the most part, the Arabs have a dual attitude, of preferring Israeli rule and hating Israel. PROFILING BECOMING LESS USEFUL An FBI agent noted that some Americans have converted to Islam and some Arab immigrants westernize their appearance so as to pass for Hispanics. They would not be detected by ethnic profiling. On the other hand, the many Muslim students at the University of California and many Muslim residents of towns there bear watching, the agent said. Neighbors tip off the FBI, with some good results, about the Muslims who rent apartments with a mattress and five computers, but no other furniture, or who suddenly change their license plates (Mideast Forum, 6/16). We can't watch millions, but we shouldn't have to live in insecurity. Why are we letting ourselves in for this, via immigration policies and college admission policies? MIDDLE EAST ASSESSED A couple of years ago, the US had the Islamists and other dictators on the run. After prematurely hailing some Arab feints towards democracy, the US found its emphasis and tactics on democracy had backfired, bringing Islamists into power. This includes Iraq, where both Shiite and Sunni Islamists are forcing women to don the veil, as Islamist rule creeps into neighborhood after neighborhood, and Christians flee. The US ended its emphasis though not the nearsighted micromanagement. Pres. Bush still gives pro-democracy speeches, but the dictators are cracking down all the harder. Syria and Iran are resuming their influence over Lebanon, as by arming the Palestinian Arab refugee descendants against the Lebanese. Islamist strategy now is to create chaos everywhere, both to discourage the West and to see where they can move in and pick up the pieces (Youssef Ibrahim, NY Sun, 6/16, p.6). One size doesn't fit all. We should have been trying to foster democracy in Iran, which couldn't get worse. Zarqawi's lair held a document showing that the insurgency was waning. It couldn't recruit new warriors much. The US was training counter-insurgency troops, seizing weapons, making massive arrests, constricting terrorist funding, and dividing the insurgents against each other. Zarqawi developed a counter-insurgency of splitting the US from its local allies and of striving to deflect US might by getting it into a war with Iran (Sameer N. Yacoub, NY Sun, 6/18, p.6). There is no indication that the US has developed a healthy humility from the failure of its micro-management in Iraq. After all, Congress rarely investigates State Department failure. There is little accountability and little change in mind-set. The enemy has more flexibility than has the US, except in military tactics. There seems to be little appreciation by Americans for what a great military we have developed, no longer the uncoordinated machine of the past. State Dept. stubbornness should give way to a procedure for reviewing the efficacy of policies. Likewise, Congress should include in bills a provision for periodic review of their efficacy. SUNNIS VS. SHIITES Sunni leaders have been indoctrinating their followers in hatred of the Shiites. Zarqawi proposed annihilating the Shiites. They may fall on each other, soon (Nibras Kazimi, NY Sun, 6/16, Op.-Ed.). Or is it the extremists against the semi-extremists? We just had learned that Sunnis and Shiites learned to work together against Israel and the West. Thus, Shiite Hizbullah works with Sunni Hamas. Iran assists the Iraqi insurgency in Iraq. Imagine if both Shiite Iran and Sunni Pakistan have a nuclear exchange! These Muslims had better curb their primitive notions, or nobody will be left. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
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WE CRINGE EVERY TIME YOU SAY "MILITANT"
Posted by Join the Boycott, June 30, 2006. |
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The LA Times says of Israel's Gaza offensive "we cringe at the
sight of a disproportionate response". More likely most Americans
wonder why Israel took so long...and cringe every time the LA Times
calls terrorists "militants". See the latest at
Stop supporting PLO propaganda. Call 1-800-252-9141 to cancel. Letters of protest to letters@latimes.com and dean.baquet@latimes.com and CC to jointheboycott@mailcity.com Join the Boycott |
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JUST IMAGINING
Posted by Steven Shamrak, June 30, 2006. |
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In 1964 a "Mexican Liberation Organization" for Independence of the South-West states of the USA" -- MLO - was created with the help of the Mexican government. In 1972 the MLO murdered the members of US wrestling team at Olympic Games of Munich. Since then, the citizens of the United States have been subjected to random acts of terror by the members of various factions of the MLO. 1993: Mexican and US representatives met in Oslo and signed a breakthrough agreement of mutual recognition between the USA and the MLO Organization, which began the US-Mexican peace process. The chain of agreements that followed, were facilitated by Israel - Wye River Memorandum, Camp David, summit at Sharm El Sheikh, Tenet Plan, Road Map. During all this time the MLO organization continued terror activity against the USA and ignored all agreements it had signed. The UN and EU observed the suicide bombings, kidnappings and home made rockets fired across the border by the MLO, but financially, politically and morally supported the MLO and the Mexican government struggle against the USA. Ten months ago the US government announced its decision to withdraw from New Mexico and transferred full control of the territory to the MLO. Six month ago, US government ignored the protest of its people and deported the non-Mexican population from New Mexico, hoping to save lives and reduce the cost of the conflict. The MLO responded with an escalation of the terror. Katusha rockets landed on the land of the United States. Suicide bombings and kidnappings never stopped. A week ago MLO members used a tunnel to attack a US military border post. Two US solders were killed, 4 wounded and one kidnapped. The MLO made a demand to release Mexican terrorists from US jails. The US army in order to free the kidnapped solder and punish the MLO entered New Mexico . A Power station, bridges and the Interior ministry building was bombed. An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman calls for restraint and advised that diplomacy is a viable option. The President of Mexico has asked the United Nations for help in freeing the MLO members. The UN special envoy for the Middle East, Alvaro de Soto, says he will discuss the issue with the US government. US's four-day military offensive in New Mexico has prompted recriminations during a UN Security Council debate sought by Spanish speeking countries. At least the Mexican people have a legitimate historical right to claim the South-West of USA -- Arabs, who call themselves Palestinians, have none! Steven Shamrak was born in the former Soviet Union (USSR) and participated in the Moscow Zionist "refusenik" movement. For the last 3 years, he has been publishing internet editorial letters on the Arab-Israeli conflict -- independently, not as a member of any organization or political movement. He can be reached by email at StevenShamrak@mail2world.com |
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BRIDGES OF PEACE BETWEEN THE WORLD OF ISLAM AND JEWISH PEOPLE
Posted by Valery Novoselsky, June 30, 2006. |
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Hello! My name is Zakira Zaripova. I am the resident of Israel living with my family in the town Rishon-le-Tzion. As a person from a Muslim background I aspire to dedicate my activity for building the bridges of peace and harmony between the world of Islam and Jewish people. This year I and the group of like-minded persons established the Tatar association in Israel. In our activity we rely on positive historical and nowadays examples indicative about the possibility of a peaceful coexistence between our communities. As such examples we can mention Khazar state, Volga Bulgaria, Ottoman Empire, and medieval Spain. And even nowadays we should not forget such personalities as Sheikh Abdul Hadi Palazzi (Italy), King Mohammed VI of Morocco and Sheikh Ravil Gainutdin (Tatarstan, Russia). We are sure that the record of such examples will expand due to our efforts in this direction. We are planning to conduct communal cultural and educational events and we shall be glad to see you among our friends, wherever you live. Respond, if you are not indifferent regarding the future of relationships between the world of Islam and Jewish people. Our contact information: Zakira Zaripova
Valery Novoselsky
Zakhar Gel'man
Respectfully yours, Zakira Zaripova.
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MINISTER YISHAI COMMITS TO HELP OUT-OF-WORK GAZA, SAMARIA EVACUEES
Posted by Bryna Berch, June 30, 2006. |
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This is a news item from Arutz-Sheva
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(IsraelNN.com) Minister of Industry Eli Yishai met today with farmers and business-owners from Gush Katif who have been without income ever since the government forcibly withdrew them from Gaza in August 2005 (the Disengagement). They presented to the minister the extent of their financial difficulties and the problems they face in reestablishing their previous businesses or farms. The farmers noted that the government does not provide them with alternate land to continue their agricultural livelihoods. Nor does the state provide alternate venues for independent businesses to re-open, the minister was told. Min, Yishai committed himself to help find solutions, or at least lessen the damage, for the evacuees. In Nitzan, which received most of the expelled Gush Katif families, there is now a 65% unemployment rate. 95% of the farmers are not working at the present time. |
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HOW TO DEAL WITH THE HOSTAGE GRAB BY THE TERRORISTS
Posted by Steven Plaut, June 30, 2006. |
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As you know, PM Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz are attacking one another, neither of whom has any idea of how to deal with the recent wave of Palestinian terror and th ekidnapping of the Israeli soldier hostage. Well, I have located an interesting commentator who seems to have an interesting take on what to do. I present here, for Olmert and Pertz to consider. The Master Plan for Dealing with the Crisis, from a knowledgable strategic commentator: "And the Canaanite heard that Israel had approached and he arose to battle with Israel and he kidnapped a hostage. And Israel swore an oath saying, 'When we get our hands on those people we will seize all their cities and confiscate everything in them.' And sure enough, right after that Israel went in and seized all their cities and confiscated their contents." But, alas, right after that the Israelis started bitching and whining, so a plague of annoying pests starting attacking them, as their comeuppance and punishment. But eventually, when they got there act together at last and finally got serious about going on the warfare against th eterrorists, they annihilated the enemy. *** The above sums up Chapter 21 of Numbers, part of this week's Torah portion. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist,
a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author
of "The Scout." He frequently comments -- both seriously and
satirically -- on Israeli politics and the left wing academic
community. His website address is
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THE WORLD LOVES JEWS - DEAD ONES
Posted by Marcel Cousineau, June 30, 2006. |
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DEMONSTRATIONS today in Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Egypt against ISRAEL That Israel is meekly defending themselves against Islamic destroyers angers most of the world. The rest of the world quietly sides with them by their silence. The truth -- Israel is only tolerated by the world when they silently allow themselves to be bled to death without a fight. When the Jews rise up and defend themselves this ALWAYS triggers outrage and hatred around the world as we see today. This is why the EU, US and UN call for Israel's restraint. They want the world to love dead and dying Jews, not strong ones able to fight and defeat their enemy. It's the concentration camp mentality ingrained in the minds of the west. WEAK JEWS UNABLE TO DEFEND THEMSELVES, DYING BY THE MILLIONS, ARE ACCEPTABLE JEWS. These are loved and pitied, in fact there are holocaust memorials in Europe and the U.S. to show feigned, fake compassion to the millions of murdered Jews while the world sat and did nothing. The world has not changed When Israel gets serious the west always rushed to restrain them. So much for the worth of these friends an allies. They are in reality cohorts of hell and will get what's coming. They (U.S., U.N., E.U.) are already recieving God's wrath and rising calamity for their hypocrisy and betrayal of Israel to the jihadist forces of satan. That's why a feeble and weak P.M.Olmert is acceptable to them, easliy constrained and limited in his response to the destroyers of Israel. A strong Jewish leader would never be tolerated by the U.S.,E.U.,U.N. Eventually Israel will have to snap out of this suicidal relationship with the world and defeat allah's devils before they wipe out Israel. These Islamic devils already have the worlds blessing of course when it comes to Israel who they are so willing to sacrifice. Marcel Cousineau can be reached at up2zionsg8@yahoo.com or go to his website: http://averyheavystone.blogspot.com |
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HAARETZ EDITORIAL ABOUT GOVERNMENT LOSING DIRECTION
Posted by Yardena Even, June 30, 2006. |
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RE: "The government is losing its reason"
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This editorial reads as if written in Gaza by one of the savages. What a pity Amos Schocken wasn`t kidnapped instead of the soldier Ha'aretz article is worth reading. It is extraordinary how Haaretz through months of its editorials and "talkbacks" tell readers and viewers, both how to take the opposing stand find fault with Israel, as appalling as it is how self hatred is so evident here, it generates hatred towards the JEWISH STATE and the Jewish People!! Such is the deep seated hatred Haaretz editors have within themselves and try to project it to the web's readers!! and it's constant. every editorial is poison to the sick mind. and there are plenty of those who post at haaretz, and get published, there is no filtering. Some of you will say, It's an Israeli paper. How can it be? My response, be aware this website caters to anti semites!!! The Editorial in question Im referring to is saying that the Israeli government simply doesn't know what it's doing. I am moved to write this to this list and expose who's who in the Israeli press and who is cheering which side. It is obvious Haaretz editorials aid the enemy there is no doubt in my mind. Yardena A Even can be contacted by email at Yardena3@aol.com |
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BACK TO THE RRH DOCTRINE
Posted by Steven Plaut, June 30, 2006. |
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Three days of intensive military action in Gaza with virtually no terrorists killed? Battling Kassams by making sonic booms? More "signalling that Israel is deadly serious"? Yes, we are back to the RRH doctrine. Here is an earlier piece of mine on this doctrine: I've long suspected that it is the Israeli grand strategy to defeat the Palestinians by forcing them to laugh themselves to death. That seems to be the only possible way to understand the latest resuscitation of the RRH Doctrine, which has dominated Israeli policy toward the Palestinians and the Arab states since the early 1990`s. The RRH Doctrine was invented in the early days of Oslo and stands for "Really, Really Hard." Israeli governments would make deals to hand over most of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the PLO, while reassuring Israelis that there was no reason for worry - if the Palestinians misbehaved, Israel would hit back at them "Really, Really Hard." The boy who cried wolf was a far more credible strategist. Even if perchance anyone ever took the RRH threats seriously, by the mid-1990`s the RRH was little more than an overly-long-running joke. Rabin and Peres had threatened it during the early days of Oslo. Later, Prime Minister Netanyahu, after each and every act of terrorism, would loudly invoke RRH, but then did little, if anything, to retaliate. After Netanyahu came Barak, who once again threatened RRH regularly. But his only implementation of it consisted of chopper attacks on empty Palestinian buildings - and only after the PLO was given advance notification so that all humans and terrorists could be evacuated. RRH was also used by Barak (and other prime ministers) to threaten Hizbullah in Lebanon and their Syrian puppet masters. After each Hizbullah attack on Israeli towns and on Israeli forces inside southern Lebanon, Israel threatened the most serious RRH. But, in the end, the only manifestation of RRH implemented by Barak consisted of a panicked unilateral capitulation and withdrawal from southern Lebanon, which left Hizbullah sitting smack dab on Israel's border, with thousands of its rockets aimed at northern Israel and with Haifa in range. When Ariel Sharon first revealed his "Gaza Disengagement Plan" after winning the Israeli election, it too was accompanied by empty threats of RRH. Israel could not get the PLO to make any concessions in exchange for surrender of the Gaza Strip and the eviction of the Jewish population there; Sharon nevertheless decided to implement the Mitzna Plan, against which he had campaigned, and withdraw without any quid pro quo. He would just go ahead with unilateral capitulation, whether the PLO liked it or not. And if the PLO failed to contain Hamas and prevent terror attacks against Israel after the withdrawal, why, then, Sharon's government would order the Israeli Defense Forces to respond with serious RRH. Yeah, sure. Hours after the Gaza capitulation was completed and all Israeli troops and settlers had been removed, the rocket and mortar attacks on the Negev began. The PLO was calling Sharon's bluff. Almost as old as the RRH Doctrine is the "Who Could Have Ever Predicted That" Syndrome. Since Oslo, every new Israeli concession resulted in escalated Palestinian violence. And the Israeli chattering classes would sigh and ask rhetorically, "Who could have possibly foreseen this?" Likewise after each violation of the Oslo Accords by the PLO, the media and the left-wing politicians would pout, "Who could have predicted that?" After years of daily proof that the entire Oslo concept was unworkable, its advocates were still responding to each new failure with total serendipity. The Israeli media could not foresee any failures of the Oslo capitulations and appeasements because the media are by and large the occupied territories of Israel's radical Left. The overseas media were even less capable of foreseeing the consequences of Oslo because they were far more interested in bashing Israel than understanding anything about the Middle East conflict. The answer to the rhetorical question of "Who could have foreseen the failures of Oslo?" is "Anyone not blinded by ideology." A few weeks after the handshake on the White House lawn in 1993, I published my first article predicting the complete failure of the Rabin-Peres Oslo initiative - in fact, it was the first such article published in North America. I predicted that the PLO would simply use any territory turned over to it by Israel to build terror infrastructure and launch attacks on Israel, and I wrote of future rocket attacks and sniper fire against Israeli towns from the PLO-controlled areas years before they actually began in earnest. And I was hardly alone in 20-20 foresight. It was not particularly difficult in 1993 to see why Oslo would fail. It is even easier now, with 12 years of disastrous "peace process" experience, to understand why Sharon.s Gaza disengagement will result in an enormous escalation of violence, not in any relaxation of tensions. Let's give the Arabs some credit. Israel has been making so many threats of RRH ever since the Oslo "peace process" began that a Palestinian leader would have to be learning-disabled to take any of them seriously. If I consider them a joke, why should Abu Mazen believe them? The Oslo Accords produced the greatest escalation in Palestinian terrorism and atrocities in modern Israeli history. At their most severe, Israeli retaliations took the form of some targeted assassinations of Hamas and PLO terror leaders. More often than not, Israeli retaliations consisted of meaningless gestures like bombing the aforementioned empty buildings or making sonic booms over terrorist concentrations, and of course the ever louder empty threats of RRH. On Israel's northern border, virtually no retaliations against Hizbullah took place, even after Hizbullah kidnapped and murdered three Israeli army officers and fired rockets into Israel. All of this brings us to the latest rocket attacks by the PLO on Sderot a few days ago. The main effect of the Gaza capitulation is that the PLO can now import unlimited supplies of weaponry from Egypt, with no ability by Israel to interfere. Israeli troops are no longer on the ground inside the Gaza Strip. We already see the results and we can clearly foresee the "unexpected" consequences that will be taking place in the near future. The PLO and its affiliates now have all the freedom they need to upgrade their rockets. The new improved Kassam rockets are already able to hit Ashkelon from Gaza. Sharon's Gaza capitulation will turn the Negev town of Sderot into Israel's Guernica. When the rockets now hit Sderot after Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, Olmert and his people respond mainly with a new round of RRH. The laughter from Ramallah was deafening. Let's note that, back before 1993, when Israel held Gaza tightly with on-the-ground military rule, there were no Kassam rockets in Gaza. The Palestinian savages threw stones at Jews because real weapons were hard to procure. The PLO knows what we all know; namely, that Olmert is afraid to take the only action that, in the end, can end the shooting of Kassam rockets into Jewish homes - R&D, or Re-Occupation and DeNazification. Let's hope his successor will be less pusillanimous. 2. Taken hostage
JERUSALEM -- What's the news?" we ask each other, and everyone understands that the question refers to Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier kidnapped by Hamas. Though the old socialist Israel is barely a memory, in times of crisis we again become collectivized. Nothing unites Israelis in outrage more than the seizure of hostages. Next week, on July 4, Israel will mark the thirtieth anniversary of the Entebbe operation that freed over a hundred Israeli hostages, and little has changed since then in the national ethos of rescue. The last Zionist ideal still shared by most Israelis is the determination to fight back. An Israeli soldier held hostage is a taunt against the Zionist promise of self-defense, an unbearable reminder of Jewish helplessness. Our obsession with hostages is a tactical weakness but a strategic strength. It allows terrorists a stunning psychological advantage: With a single random kidnapping, they hold an entire society emotionally hostage. Strategically, though, hostage-taking only strengthens Israeli resolve. And resolve is precisely what the public now expects of its government. So far, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has responded well. He began by issuing two policy guidelines in dealing with the hostage crisis. The first is that Israel won't negotiate over Gilad's release and won't exchange prisoners. The second is that Hamas leaders -- "political" as well as "military" -- will be held personally accountable for the fate of Gilad. If Olmert's government hopes to retain its credibility among Israelis, it needs to maintain those two principles. In recent months, the public has become increasingly disillusioned with the government's failure to adequately respond to the almost daily rocket attacks on Israeli towns and villages, especially Sderot. No Israeli town within the 1967 borders has experienced the kind of relentless attacks that Sderot has suffered. Even Hizbollah's Katyusha rocket attacks on the northern town of Kiryat Shmona in the early 1980s occurred in waves, with periods of reprieve between them. In the ten months since the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, though, Sderot has barely known a day of peace. After the withdrawal, Israelis expected the government to enforce a policy of zero-tolerance for Palestinian attacks emanating from Gaza, even for attacks that didn't cause fatalities. Instead, the government responded unevenly, often ignoring rocket attacks that caused no damage. Many Israelis see Hamas's raid on an Israeli military post within the 1967 borders as a result of the weakness Israel has projected. In yesterday's letters column in the daily Maariv, for example, the hardline consensus was almost unanimous. "We told you so," wrote one reader who identified himself as "right wing." "Why doesn't Israel shut off electricity and water to Gaza?" demanded another reader. "Enough words, it's time to act," insisted a third. That perception of weakness could have far-reaching domestic consequences. The premise of Olmert's centrist party, Kadima, is that only a hawkish approach on security will convince Israelis to implement a dovish policy on territory. Given the Sderot precedent, though, Olmert is failing to uphold that centrist doctrine. For Olmert to win the public's agreement for another unilateral withdrawal, he needs to begin proving that he is capable of defending Tel Aviv from Palestinian rockets. And the place to begin convincing Israelis is Gaza. The military invasion of Gaza that began last night, and whose purpose is to surround the area where Gilad is presumably being held, must only be the first step. A brief invasion, a "show of force," is hardly adequate. Instead, Israel needs to resume its policy of systematically targeting Hamas leaders, just as it did several years ago, culminating in the assassination of Sheik Yassin. That policy drove most of Hamas deep underground and led to the cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Resuming assassinations against Hamas's political echelon is, of course, a declaration of war against the Hamas regime. But given its official sanctioning of kidnapping, Hamas has already declared war against Israel. Hamas's adoption of the tactics of Al Qaeda in Iraq comes as no surprise. After the killing of Zarqawi, Hamas issued a statement mourning his death and urging continued "resistance," thereby making the Hamas regime the world's only openly pro-Al Qaeda government. Unfortunately, the international media missed the significance of that moment. That lapse in media judgment is worth recalling in the coming days, when much of the media will be presenting the "prisoners' document" -- a set of demands drawn up by Hamas and Fatah members imprisoned in Israel -- as a historic Hamas concession, offering "tacit" recognition of Israel. In fact, the document does nothing of the sort. Nowhere does the document recognize the right of Israel to exist. Instead, it calls for Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders, followed by the "right" of Palestinian refugees to resettle in Israel and demographically overwhelm the Jewish state. The prisoners' document, in other words, is a plan for the phased destruction of Israel -- precisely why Hamas can endorse it. Driving on the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway, I saw this graffiti: "Olmert, gadol alecha". which roughly translates as, "Olmert, the job is bigger than you are." For Olmert to disprove that growing suspicion among Israelis, he must commit himself to the destruction of the Hamas regime. Sooner or later, Israel will have no choice but to adopt that policy. The only question is whether Olmert will still be prime minister when that happens. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist,
a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author
of "The Scout." He frequently comments -- both seriously and
satirically -- on Israeli politics and the left wing academic
community. His website address is
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URGENT APPEAL TO HELP PREVENT KIDNAPPINGS IN ISRAEL
Posted by Voice of Judea, June 30, 2006. |
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Today Eliyahu Ashri was buried in Israel. Eliyahu was only 18 when he was kidnapped and brutally murdered last Sunday. Eliyahu was hitching back to shcool as many young Jews often do near Ofrah, when Arab terrorists forced him into their car and sped away, passing several Israeli checkpoints, and entering into PA controlled Ramalah, where his body was found yesterday. Our sincere condolences must be extended to the family of Eliyahu Ashri. At this time all of us must also make a commitment to do everything within our power to stop such heinous attacks in the future. Eliyahu was not the first Jewish kid to stand alone at a dark and vulnerable hitching post to be abducted and murdered. Several weeks ago two girls miraculously escaped their would-be kidnappers at a hitching station near Rehelim. Hundreds, if not thousands of Jewish kids regularly wait at bus stops and hitching stations along the roads of Yesha. K.L.Y. -- Klavim Lehaganat Yisrael -- Dogs for the defense of Israel is launching an emergency appeal to raise funds to finance patrols consisting of security dogs and trained handlers to help secure these bus stops and hitching posts throughout Yesha. K.L.Y. -- Klavim L'Haganat Yisrael -- is a unique life-saving association that sponsors special bomb detection and patrol dogs, as well as their volunteer handlers to help detect and deter terrorists in Israel. The sponsorship and training of a team consisting of a dog and handler cost 10,000 dollars. K.L.Y. Klavim L'Haganat Yisrael is a fully registered Israeli Amutah Charity that has already donated and dispatched dozens of dogs and handlers in Israel and has already helped prevent at least 4 terrorist attacks by assisting the army and local security patrols in early detection of terrorist movement or by assisting the IDF in tracking after fugitive terrorists. In wake of the recent rash of kidnappings and attempted kidnappings at deserted and vulnerable hitching posts throughout Yesha, K.L.Y. is calling upon you to help us finance our patrols at these hitching stations with specially trained canines. The added presence of the dogs and their handlers at these hitching posts will make it more difficult or impossible for terrorists to simply pull up along side a lone Jewish kid and to force him/her into a car without being noticed. Where possible, KLY will also supply transport to "safer" areas. K.L.Y. is presently distributing and posting flyers in these vulnerable spots publishing a hotline where people can report lone Jewish kids hitching in "unsafe areas", and when possible, K.L.Y. will dispatch volunteers and dogs to stand with the hitchers or to pick them up. K.L.Y. is currently financing a medical response and patrol vehicle that will transport medics, dogs and handlers to patrol vulnerable hitching spots near Rechelim, Shilo, Ofra, Eli, Kedumim, Karnei Shomron, Gush Etzyon, Efrat and Kiryat Arba. Thanks to the generous contribution of supporters in the U.S., a life-saving emergency vehicle was donated. God bless the righteous individuals who have helped us purchase the vehicle and the dogs. However, the maintenance of the vehicles, volunteers and canines cost us money that we don’t always have available. The purchase of gasoline, food and housing for the dogs and volunteers, equipment and canine training is not cheap either. With the rise in the cost of gasoline in Israel, the daily cost of gas for each patrol-vehicle, can cost as much as 400-500 shekels = 100-130 dollars. Due to lack of funds we have been forced to cut back much of our canine training exercises and we lack the necessary funds to fuel the cars and to sponsor this vital work to the extent that we need to. This is a rare opportunity where you can make a direct contribution that could immediately and directly help save lives in Israel. We have brave and courageous, wonderful volunteers and we have the experts to train these special anti-terror canines. Please help us sponsor more dogs and handlers. We urge you to make a generous contribution to K.L.Y.– Klavim L'Haganat Yisrael. If you can't afford to sponsor a team for 10,000 dollars then send whatever you can. We desperately need your help and we are grateful for any and all help you can offer us. You can call 011 972 5231 80290 for further reference (From Israel, dial 052 3180290.) Emails can be sent to IsraeliDefenders@aol.com PLEASE SEND YOUR GENEROUS CONTRIBUTION NOW DIRECTLY TO ISRAEL TO
Contact the Voice of Judea by email at mishal@mishal.org |
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GHETTO MENTALITY
Posted by Sergio Tessa (HaDaR), June 30, 2006. |
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This was an item in Israel National News --
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We built by-pass roads so that they would not kill us, since Jews are not allowed to travel freely passing by Arab villages. We cannot travel on their roads. They travel on our by-pass roads and also use them to hurt us. The government accepts all this as the ghetto Jews accepted all decision and abuse by the goyim as a ghezerà: they turn their eyes to the other side; they say "it rains" when they spit on us; they do not arrest them if they stone our cars, but arrest us if we dare defending ourselves when stoned; army and police do not even show-up when called because Arabs stone Jews, but get there within three minutes if Jews stone Arab cars; they allow Arabs to shoot THOUSANDS of bullets every day at their weddings, doing absolutely NOTHING to put a stop to the nightly shootings, but if we dare even shooting in the air when we are attacked they arrest us and confiscate our weapons. Now, after they are unable and unwilling to insure our safety and they PRE-EMPT US from defending ourselves, they want to make sure that our daily lives are impossible and we cannot travel freely. B"H, our great youth, which does not have AT ALL the ghetto mentality of our leaders, and which does not spend their days getting stoned, stabbing each other, stealing and other great occupations like those. which are UNKNOWN to the "settler's youth", have decided that IF WE CANNOT TRAVEL ON OUR ROADS BECAUSE THE ARABS ENDANGER US, THE ARABS SHOULD NOT TRAVEL ON THEM EITHER; so they are blocking the roads to Arab cars. OF COURSE, the collaborators with the Arabic speaking nazi enemy will jail THEM...
Sergio Tessa can be reached at Hadar-Israel@verizon.net.
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THE SWEETNESS THAT SAYS, 'DESTROY AMALEK,'
Posted by Professor Eugene Narrett, June 30, 2006. |
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One supposes that it is fitting and proper that the IAF is being gingerly used in small doses in Gaza to strike one building of Fatah brigades and to disperse a squad or two of jihadists in the act of attacking Israeli soldiers. Since we've been told by President Bush, Mr. Olmert, and numerous other brand-name politicians that the head of Fatah, Abu Mazen Abbas, is "a moderate" and since Fatah is the offshoot of Amin el Husseini's Nazi - affiliated Islamic terror movements, these small efforts are not much comfort; they are slim pickin's indeed for the retribution due and payable a long time. And since the show of force, accompanied by a few missiles for media / public consumption is meant to save Hosni Mubarak and Prince Abdullah under color of rescuing soldier Shalit we are not impressed by burblings of a 'conditional agreement'; we are depressed by reports of the slowing of the slow motion Israeli display. Perhaps what is needed here are reminders of vivid kinds, that Israelis look at photos of the murdered youth who was kidnapped while hitchhiking and shot in the head, his beautiful life being turned into inert matter by savages spawned by the Arabs culture of hate, of murderous hatred for Jews. To look at photos of Koby Mandel, Shalhevet Pass and all the others murdered since and before Oslo by the homicidal haters of the Jewish people. And then let us remember that "Amalek came and attacked Israel in Rephidim" and the positive command of Hashem to Moshe that he write as a remembrance in the Book and speak into the ears of Joshua that the hand is on the throne of G-d: Hashem maintains a war against Amalek... do not forget." And that when Samuel went to anoint Saul he told the new king to "hear the words of Hashem, Master of hosts: 'I have remembered what Amalek did to Israel. Now go and strike down Amalek and destroy everything that he has. Have no pity on him, kill man and woman alike, infant and suckling alike, ox and sheep alike, camel and donkey alike" (Exodus 17:9-16, 1 Samuel 15). And although Shaul did not complete the job, woe to those who fail to complete this job and woe and grief to all the Jewish people --- still "he struck Amalek down from Havilah to the approach to Shur." That would be sufficient for a start for now instead of the timid, approved-by-the-State Department 'show of force' and save Mubarak operation currently in place. Think of those slain, and the apposite teaching: "just as they have no pity on you, so you have no pity on them." The devastated ones need vengeance to see that there is a G-d Who judges in the land, that there is a G-d in Israel. Remember the slain Jews. Get away from 'Uncle Laban' and destroy Amalek, all of them alike. That is the only way to healing and to peace; a time for war, as they keep telling us, and then, after victory, a time for peace. Eugene Narrett's new book is "Israel and the Endtimes". |
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THE LIFE AND DEATH OF ELIYAHU PINCHAS ASHERI, ZTK"L
Posted by Fern Sidman, June 29, 2006. |
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On this day, June 29th, 2006, the 3rd day of Tammuz 5766, the nation of Israel buried a true Eved Elokim, a faithful servant of the Almighty G-d of Israel. Today thousands of Jews across the State of Israel attended the funeral of 18 year old Eliyahu Pinchas Asheri, ZTK"L, the yeshiva student from the settlement of Itamar who was kidnapped and murdered by Arab terrorists. Asheri, a student at the pre-military yeshiva academy in N'vei Tzuf in the western Binyamin region was last seen at 9:00 p.m. on Sunday at the French Hill junction in northern Jerusalem. He was hitching a ride to his yeshiva in N'vei Tzuf. His parents, Yitro and Miriam Asheri reported him missing on Monday, but according to reports from the IDF he had already been murdered by that time. According to Arutz Sheva, "A Ramallah Tanzim terror cell, taking orders from the Gaza headquarters of the Popular Resistance Committee, carried out the kidnapping and murdered of pre-military Torah academy student Eliyahu Asheri, according to the IDF." The report went on to say, "Itamar resident Eliyahu Asheri, z'l, died immediately when he was kidnapped on Sunday, according to OC Central Commander Yair Naveh. Naveh told reporters at a briefing on Thursday that the 18-year-old victim was not kept alive, as claimed by the terrorist group that abducted him, but was "without a doubt murdered immediately." Popular Resistance Committees terrorists claimed they had kept Asheri alive until Tuesday while considering the possibility of holding him for ransom. Said Naveh, "They had absolutely no intention to hold negotiations." According to The Jerusalem Post, (6/27/06), "On Wednesday, elite police and IDF forces arrested Popular Resistance Committees operative Osam Abu Rajil, who was suspected to have been involved in the kidnapping. Abu Rajil led the forces to a mountainside north of Ramallah, where Asheri's body was found buried, Army Radio reported. Naveh confirmed Thursday that Abu Rajil was personally involved in the kidnapping. On Tuesday, a spokesman for the Hamas-affiliated PRC told Al-Jazeera that Asheri would be "butchered in front of TV cameras" if the IDF operation in Gaza did not stop. "Our patience is running out," he said. "I am announcing for the first time that the kidnapped Zionist Israel is searching for is the same settler who is being held by us. He is aged 18-1/2... and is a soldier in a pre-military academy," said the spokesman, who identified himself as Abu Abir." In addition, Arutz Sheva reported that, "The IDF did not say whether the assault rifles which the Olmert government and the United States transferred to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, (Abu Mazen) earlier this month were used at any point in the kidnapping or murder. WorldNetDaily reported in the name of "sources close to the Al Aqsa Brigades" that the guns had been used in two separate shooting attacks against Israelis within days of the transfer." Roads in Jerusalem were closed in honor of the funeral, which is to end with the youth's burial in the Mt. of Olives cemetery. Eliyahu's teachers and family, one after the other, spoke about what a sweet person he was. Over and over it was mentioned that Eliyahu's prayers were "like fire." "You went up to Heaven in a storm, like Eliyahu (Elijah) the prophet," Eliyahu's mother Miriam eulogized, in a calm and determined voice. "Now, Eliyahu - stand before G-d and speak out in favor of the Nation of Israel - don't let up until our Father in Heaven agrees to reveal Himself to His people." Yitro Asheri spoke of his son, recalling that he would always sit in their home and make peace between his siblings. "When you get to Heaven," the Australian immigrant said, addressing his son, "make peace within our people and between the Nation of Israel and our Father in Heaven." Asheri added that the world has much less prayer in it now that Eliyahu is gone and implored all of Israel to "Pray! Pray - because you are righteous and G-d desires your prayers." Eliyahu's mother Miriam told Voice of Israel Radio this morning, "At this time, I do have not much to say, for the pain is so unbearable; I can barely find a way to hold it. But one thing I can say is that many times in the past years, because of the many disagreements-between-brothers we have in this country, many times I asked G-d to give me, first of all, love in my heart for everyone. And now, following this terrible thing that happened to us, it has become clear to me how really great the Nation of Israel is - how much help we have received, and all the volunteers, and the army - there are no words to describe it... And this was the way of Eliyahu as well..." Rabbi Chaim Druckman, the national head of the Bnei Akiva Yeshivot movement and Eliyahu's adopted grandfather, said at the funeral that sometimes funerals are like sunsets, but that Eliyahu's passing is like the sun going dark at noontime. "This is not just a private funeral, but one belonging to all of Israel," he said. "His murderers intended to kill any one of us and all of us." Rabbi Avi Ronski, the Rabbi of Itamar and the man who has been tapped to become the next Chief Rabbi of the IDF, said at the funeral, "It is now clear that they murdered Eliyahu very soon after they kidnapped him, and all their announcements and threats afterwards were merely psychological pressure against us." The murder of Eliyahu Asheri comes on the heels of a Hamas terrorist attack several days ago when a Hamas 8-man force crawled through an underground tunnel into Israel, lobbing grenades and bombs at a military outpost killing two IDF soldiers, Lt. Hanan Barak, 20, from Arad and Sgt. Pavel Slutzker, 20 from Dimona A third soldier, Corp. Gilead Shalit from Mitzpe Hila was kidnapped. The kidnapping of Corp. Shalit, prompted the IDF to launch its "Operation Summer Rains" offensive Wednesday with the entry of Israeli forces into Southern Gaza. The stated goal: The release of kidnapped solider Gilad Shalit. In addition to knocking out electricity in much of Gaza, the operation has included an aerial missile attack on an electricity station south of Gaza City, aerial attacks on three bridges in the central Gaza Strip, over dry river beds, artillery fire at open areas in the southern Gaza Strip and entry of armored forces into the Dahaniya area, mainly the abandoned airport, where the IDF has set up a headquarters. This area represents a strategic control and observation point over the southern Gaza Strip. In response to the murder and kidnapping, Israeli forces arrested one-third of the Hamas-led Palestinian Cabinet and 20 lawmakers early Thursday and pressed their incursion into Gaza. Today is a day of tremendous grief and mourning for the family and friends of Eliyahu Asheri. It is also a day of mourning for the entire nation of Israel. It is not easy to forget a day on which a young Jew was buried. A young Jew, heinously murdered by Arab savages. A Jew who feared G-d and walked in the way of his ancestors, in the way of Hashem's holy Torah. It will be difficult to forget the looks of profound grief and misery etched on the faces of his parents, his siblings, his friends and neighbors. The murder of Eliyahu Pinchas Asheri was the murder of a part of each and every one of us. For the murder of Eliyahu Pinchas Asheri could have been the murder of our own son or brother. Ask any parent that has lost a child and they will tell you that they never get up from sitting shiva. The sadness and despair is all consuming and does not diminish with the passing of time. We are commanded by the Almighty G-d of Israel to be our brother's keeper, for we are all one nation, a collective body and soul. When one of us grieves and suffers, we all grieve and we all suffer. Today we have lost a brother and our tears flow freely and without respite. And we ask, why was Eliyahu Asheri murdered? Why was it he that had to spend his last moments on this earth as a captive of barbaric Arab terrorists who have no respect for the sanctity of life? We may never know the answer, however we do know that the blood of Eliyahu Asheri is on the hands of those who control the government of Israel. Of those who aid and abet Arab terrorists by evacuating thousands of Jews from their homes in Gush Katif and who plan to uproot more Jewish settlements in the ultimate goal of creating "peace" with our Arab enemy. The blood of Eliyahu Asheri is on the hands of those in the government of Israel who transfer thousands of assault rifles and a million rounds of ammunition into the hands who those who seek our destruction. We can blame a government of Israel who oppresses the free speech of Jews who oppose the Olmert convergence-realignment plan. We can point our fingers in outrage and indignation at a government who is bent on national suicide. A government comprised of spiritually bankrupt leaders that lead us to believe that genuine and long lasting "peace" can come to fruition with an enemy that has sworn our destruction. An enemy who interprets territorial compromise and conciliation as acts of weakness and surrender and who respond with even more contempt and disdain. It is true that the government of Israel is one that is devoid of belief and faith, true belief and faith in the G-d of Israel and Torah. It is a government that has elevated the concepts of a westernized democracy into their own personal god. A government that displays a callous disregard when Jewish blood is spilled. We must express our anger and our outrage and rise up in indignation at the actions of a government who is responsible for the murder of our brother, Eliyahu Pinchas Asheri. For Eliyahu's murder can be harbinger for the potential murders of our own brothers. Let us raise our collective voices in prayer and supplication to the Almighty G-d of Israel. Let us plead with Hashem to give us the strength, courage, fortitude and tenacity to oppose a government that does not protect its people. Let us beseech the Almighty to provide comfort, strength and courage to the Asheri family and to all of the nation of Israel, for on this day, a part of each and every one of us has died. Contact Fern Sidman at AriellaH@aol.com |
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WHY IT'S NOT EASY BEING A LIBERAL
Posted by Burt Prelutsky, June 29, 2006. |
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It was inevitable that while most of the civilized people of the world, including millions of Iraqis, celebrated the death of Zarqawi, there was one significant group that pooh-poohed the happy occasion. I refer to those notorious party-poopers, American liberals. Most of their consternation centered on two things. The first of these was that America had turned him into a martyr. Leftists insisted that his death was meaningless because dozens of Muslims would rise up to take his place, while millions of others would now be provoked into joining the ranks of the extremists. That is what the pinheads always say, but the fact is that by this time, after all the suicide bombings and after the killing of so many so-called insurgents and after the capturing of Saddam Hussein, if there's one thing that's a glut on the market, it's Islamic martyrs. By this late date, surely they must have run out of virgins in Paradise, and be making do with divorcees, the recently widowed, and elderly spinsters. The other thing the liberals started spouting off about was the suspicious timing of Zarqawi's execution. As usual, when something terrific occurs that might reflect favorably on the administration, the lefties spring into action. In this case, they claimed that we could have killed or captured the butcher of Baghdad on several earlier occasions, except that the Republicans were waiting for the most opportune moment in order to cash in politically. What they failed to bother explaining was exactly how, with elections in November, killing Zarqawi in early June could possibly be regarded as an example of cynical strategy, easily traced to the nefarious mind of Karl Rove. I suppose the thing to keep in mind is that these are the same lunkheads who kept insisting back in 2004 that, suddenly, on the eve of election day, George Bush would announce that we'd just nabbed Osama bin Laden. And when that didn't happen, I don't remember even one of them admitting he'd been a sap to suggest it. Speaking of Osama, I wish to go on record and state that I really don't care if we never capture him. Let's face it, if we did, we\d merely have to live through another farcical trial, such as Hussein\s. If it's all the same to you, I don't need to hear Ramsey Clark and a team of leftist lawyers pleading his case night after night on the news. In the end, after all, even if he were found guilty, he'd only wind up receiving a prison sentence. Frankly, I prefer to picture him roughing it in the mountains of Afghanistan or Pakistan, cowering every time a helicopter flies by, than imagine him watching cable TV, working out in the weight room, and showing up in our living rooms every other week, courtesy of Larry King, Barbara Walters, and Geraldo Rivera. One question left unanswered for me was whether or not America's bad will ambassador, Jimmy Carter, flew over to Iraq to pay his respects at Zarqawi's funeral.
Burt Prelutsky has been a humor columnist for the L.A. Times and a
movie critic for Los Angeles magazine. He is the author of
Conservatives are from Mars (Liberals are from San Francisco).
This essay appeared on the Townhall website:
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RADICALS THREATEN SHOAIB CHOUDHURY WITH DEATH
Posted by Shoaib Choudhury, June 29, 2006. |
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Radical Islamist leader, Noor Hussain Noorani, personally threatened the life of Bangladeshi editor Salah Uddin Choudhury yesterday. Noorani heads the radical Khatmey Nabuat Movement (KNM), which clashed with police last week after it tried to attack an Ahmadi prayer service in the capital of Dhaka. The Ahmadi are a Muslim group that has angered fundamentalists by its belief that Muhammed was not the final prophet, and for their belief in the crucifixion of Jesus. KNM and others have been demanding that the government declare the Ahamadi non-Muslim. They are allied with various Muslim extremist groups in pressing that agenda and the imposition of Sharia (Muslim law) throughout all of Bangladesh. Choudhury, a Muslim, has been associated with various causes opposed by Bangladeshi Islamists ever since he was arrested in 2003 when he tried to go to Israel. Noorani became incensed at Choudhury after he published an editorial praising an article that warned police and the public about KNM's intention to attack the Ahamadi last week. Previously, KNM had operated unmolested in Bangladesh, but police blocked KNM attacks both on Friday and Sunday. Noorani was injured in the Sunday melee and taken to a local hospital where he was treated and released. Noorani called the editorial office of Weekly Blitz, Choudhury's paper three times within eight minutes Thursday evening. He called from his cell phone and spoke with Circulation Manager Amanur Rashid Aman. According to Aman, Noorani sounded highly agitated on the phone and repeatedly threatened to kill Choudhury and "blow away the Blitz office," located in downtown Dhaka. When informed of the threat, Choudhury, whom Islamic radicals have threatened before for his anti-terrorist stance, went to the police and filed a report. The report noted the death threats and identified the mobile phone number from which the call originated as Noorani's. "It wasn't even unnecessary for me to inform the police," Choudhury said, "since they have been intercepting all my calls for months. And because Noorani is in the limelight right now you know they are intercepting his as well." Bangladeshi officials have long intercepted all international calls, and calls by and to dissidents and religious minorities. A copy of the report had an official stamp showing that police had seen it, but thus far they have taken no action either to protect Choudhury or Blitz offices. Choudhury complained bitterly that when another paper recently received a threat by mail, the police arrived immediately to investigate the threat and protect the paper. Choudhury was freed on bail last year after seventeen months in prison after he warned about the rise of radical Islam in Bangladesh, urged his nation to recognize Israel, and advocated interfaith understanding and religious equality. He still faces sedition charges, although government officials admit there is no substance to them. This below is what Mr. Choudhury wrote: |
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This is a disturbing news indeed. Today, we received three phone calls from Mufti Noor Hussain Noorani, Chief of ultra radical Islamist millitant group Khatmey Nabuat Movement (the organization demanding declaration of Ahmedias as non-Muslims). Kindly read the exact translation of the General Diary that had been filed with the local police station right after the incident. We are also attching the image of the GD. The most discouraging news is, police or the government are extremely reluctant in providing security to Blitz office and the editor even after the formal complaint nor they have began the investigation or any legal actions. This is for your kind information please. For further details, please call our USA Correspondent Dr. Richard L. Benkin at: +1-8479226426 or call Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury at: 880-191-326232, 880-1711-938344. The translation of the General Diary is set below:
Contact Richard Benkin at drrbenkin@comcast.net. |
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ABBAS' NEWEST BIG LIE
Posted by Sanda Abramovici-Lam, June 29, 2006. |
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This article was written by Caroline Glick and appeared today in
the Jerusalem Post |
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Fresh from her tete-a-tete with PA leader Mahmoud Abbas last week, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni instructed her press flack to tell her fellow cabinet ministers to remain mum on Abbas's latest "diplomatic" gambit. In the words of her communications director Shai Ben Maor, Abbas's decision to turn a document written by convicted Palestinian murderers and attempted murderers sitting in Israeli prisons into the centerpiece of his diplomatic policy is "an internal Palestinian issue" and so Israel should not be weighing in on it. What is the context of Abbas's new initiative regarding which Israel is supposed to have no official position? After receiving the Bush Administration's full-throated endorsement during Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's visit to Washington, DC last week, Abbas sprang into action. Following Bush's characterization of Abbas as a man who "favors and speaks for peace and negotiations," Abbas - who has never lifted a finger and indeed pledged never to lift a finger to fight Hamas, Fatah or any other terrorist organization - announced that he has a new plan. Abbas's plan has two central components. First, he wants to get the PA's Hamas government to accept the document authored by convicted murderers and attempted murderers. Second, Abbas wants Israel to allow him to raise, arm and field a new militia with 10,000 soldiers to supplement the 20,000 soldiers Abbas already hired in the lead-up to the Palestinian elections in January. Both the Israeli and the international media have referred to the convicted terrorists' declaration as a "peace plan." London's Daily Telegraph's summation of what its editors considered the main points of the declaration represents more or less what all the mass media organs in Israel and abroad have been saying. The Telegraph's report claims that the plan has six main components. In its words, those components are: "A negotiated settlement with Israel if the Jewish state withdraws from land occupied since the 1967 Middle East war; continued resistance, focusing on peaceful means, on land occupied since 1967 - the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem; an independent Palestinian state on all land occupied since 1967, with Jerusalem as its capital; a unity Palestinian government uniting all factions, including Hamas and Fatah; guarantee the right of return of Palestinian refugees to their former homes inside Israel and the release of all Palestinian prisoners in Israel; speeding up efforts to incorporate Hamas and Islamic Jihad into the umbrella Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which has negotiated past interim peace accords." IF ONE were to take these terms at face value, perhaps this could be seen as a step forward. But just the barest scrutiny shows that what the jailed terrorists announced was nothing more than a new restatement of their declaration of war against Israel and a recommitment to their goal of destroying the Jewish State. It is true that the document speaks specifically of Israel's retreat from Judea and Samaria as well as Jerusalem. Yet led by convicted mass murderer, Fatah head and darling of the Israeli Left, Marwan Barghouti, the terrorists reiterated the "liberation of the land," that is, all of Israel, as their real objective. The Telegraph's assertion that the "resistance" to Israel is supposed to be largely by "peaceful means" leads a reader to assume this means that the terrorists are calling for an end to terrorism. Nothing could be further from the truth. In six separate clauses of the declaration, the terrorists make clear their continued commitment to carrying out acts of terrorism against Israel as part of their strategy for destroying the Jewish state. Those acts of terrorism are supposed to be conducted in conjunction with civil disturbances, negotiations with Israel run by Abbas (something that Iran and its client the Palestinian Islamic Jihad does not accept), as well as an international diplomatic campaign in cooperation with NGO allies intended to delegitimize and demonize Israel. Far from calling for an end to terrorism, the terrorists called for the establishment of a new joint terrorist organization called the "Popular Resistance Front" that is to be composed of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah terrorists. As they put it in their declaration, this new group's job will be "to lead and engage in resistance against the occupation and to unify and coordinate action and resistance and to form a unified political reference for the front." It is unclear what the difference will be between this proposed terrorist organization and the Popular Resistance Committees that Barghouti and his Hamas and Islamic Jihad colleagues formed in the months that preceded the outbreak of their terror war in September 2000. The Telegraph notes that the imprisoned terrorists insist that Israel accept the so-called "right of return" of the so-called "refugees," but the newspaper, like its Israeli media counterparts, fails to recognize the true significance of this repeated demand. These murderers are demanding that in exchange for a temporary cessation of terror attacks against its citizens, Israel agree to its national destruction. The so-called "right of return" is a demand that Israel accept the unimpeded immigration of millions of hostile, foreign- born Arabs to its sovereign territory. THESE MURDERERS devote an inordinate amount of attention in their declaration to detailing their desire to incorporate Hamas and Islamic Jihad into the Abbas-led PLO. They repeatedly call for unity between the "nationalist and Islamic" factions. That is, they call for unity in their ranks for the purpose of advancing their war for the destruction of Israel. Finally, in a decidedly self-serving fashion, the convicted murderers emphatically call for their own release from Israeli jails and see their release as "a sacred national duty." In short, much as one would expect, convicted Palestinian mass murderers from various terrorist organizations met in an Israeli prison yard to recommit themselves and their followers to their war for the destruction of Israel. And, much as one would expect, the international and Israeli press presented this declaration of war as a peace plan. ABBAS TOOK the media by storm with his bold declaration last Thursday that if Hamas does not accept the prisoners' declaration within 10 days he will bring it before the Palestinian public as a referendum. "What a bold effort!" the press exclaimed excitedly. Buoyed by his success, Abbas announced the second half of his plan. In order to ensure Hamas realizes that he means business, Abbas renewed his demand that Israel allow him to receive arms and ammunition for his loyal troops. He further announced his intention to increase the size of his current personal army - Force 17 - from 2,500-3,000 men to 10,000 men. There is very little new in the convicted terrorists' declaration or in Abbas's embrace of their declaration. Abbas has been embracing declarations of war against Israel since he joined Fatah as Yasser Arafat's deputy in 1959. There is also nothing new about Abbas's demand that Israel either supply him with arms or enable others to supply him with arms even though such arms and ammunition have been directly involved in the murder of scores of Israeli citizens since 1996. What is new is the response of Israel's government. Since 2000, the government has refused Palestinian requests for guns and ammunition. Yet, last week, Olmert's government allowed Abbas to receive arms and ammunition for Force 17 from Jordan and Egypt. Not only did the government allow forces committed to Israel's destruction to receive arms and ammunition, well placed sources claim that Defense Minister Amir Peretz's office was the source of the misinformation campaign that has dubbed the prisoners' declaration of war a peace plan. In misleading Israel's citizenry about the content of the murderers' war declaration and in enabling the rearmament and quadrupling of the size of Abbas's personal army, the Israeli government and the Israeli and international media have also been egged on by the Bush Administration. US military envoy to the Hamas-led PA, General Keith Dayton has reportedly been a major supporter of Peretz's desire to arm Abbas's men. The Americans have been pushing to have this militia deployed in northern Gaza where its members will purportedly stop Kassam missiles from being fired at Israel even though Abbas, their commander has adopted a plan that calls for continued attacks against Israel. It is hard to find polite words to describe an Israeli government that embraces enthusiastically a declaration of war against its country and enables its enemy to arm and field armies that have been trained to kill its citizens. It is hard not to view US support for the so-called "peace plan" as a repudiation of the Bush Doctrine. Contact Sanda Abramovici-Lam at sab@telefonica.net.pe |
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ENOUGH TALK
Posted by Zalmi, June 29, 2006. |
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We will stay in Gaza ... we won't stay in Gaza. Hamas should do this ... Abbas must do that. Peres says this, Ramon says that. Yap yap yap ... there is no shortage of talking heads from all branches of the government pontificating over the abduction and killing of our people. Personally I have had a bellyful of what the politicians have had to offer. Like disengagement and the senseless eviction of thousands of Jewish families most of which still languish in temporary shelters still waiting to receive a penny in compensation. Like the relaxing of border restraints and confidence-building measures for Abbas, which have been exploited for the importation of ever greater quantities of arms which will be ranged against our troops in the days ahead. And let's not forget our own shipments of thousands of assault rifles to bolster Mr Abbas's security. Then there was the wholesale release of hundreds of terrorists, each one of which our soldiers will have risked their lives to capture. And allowing a 6-times lifer like Barghouti -- who should be rotting in solitary - enough freedom to run a political campaign from his jail cell. Like showing what a pluralistic liberal democracy we are by allowing Hamas to campaign for office in our own territory and appointing an Arab MK to sit on the Defense and Foreign Relations committee. What utter farce! And for all of this, what have we got in return? Less than zero. Less than zero means going backwards. Our people used to be able to walk the streets without fear of missiles falling out of the sky. Parents used to have a reasonable expectation that their kids could roam freely in their country without fear of being kidnapped and torn to shreds by hate-crazed Islamic fanatics. No longer. These are the wages of appeasement and the price of living in denial. Denial of the plain fact that these people have one single aim. To kill as many Jews as they possibly can and to terrorise the rest into fleeing Israel. That has always been their aim. Nothing less than total erasure of the Jewish state. That is why Arafat turned down even Barak's giveaway offer at Camp David. You cannot keep throwing meat to a lion and expect it to turn into a vegetarian. So let it stop right here. Let the politicians finally shut up and let the army do what it knows best. To bring back their boy -- hopefully alive -- and flatten the terror infrastructure along the way. And to consign Hamas leaders Meshaal and Haniyeh to their heavenly virgins in the same bloodied state as Yassin and Rantisi before them. That is the only message our "peace partners" have ever understood. Contact Zalmi at zalmi@zalmi.net |
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THE WAR THE "TIMES" DOESN'T KNOW EXISTS; NEWS ITEMS AS EDITORIALS; PRISONERS' PLAN
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 29, 2006. |
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THE PRISONERS' PLAN FOR JAIL-BREAK The media call the Arab prisoners' plan a peace plan, as if unaware that it advocates continued fighting and flooding Israel with enemies. This is a war plan. What else should one expect of the prisoners, all terrorists, many being mass-murderers? For the media to accept their plan as a peace plan without skepticism, given its source and the prisoners' unrepentant attitude about terrorism, shouts bias or blindness. HOW TO DEAL WITH IRAN We must stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability (weapons plus means of delivery). We are about to find out that deferring action eventually requires mega-action. I hoped that we would impose sanctions and overthrow the regime before it came to war. By deferring action, we may be left only with war. Then it is a question of how and with what weapons. War is rejected by pro-democracy elements in Iran that hate the regime. They threaten to join in solidarity with the regime against US raiders or invaders. If that is their attitude, I think less of them and have less interest in sparing them. On the other hand, in the face of their opposition, war would be more difficult. JOURNALIST SETS EDITORIAL TONE IN NEWS ARTICLES The NY Times and some wire services still can't refrain from adding the adjective, "moderate," to any mention of Abbas' name. I've objected to that as being an untrue characterization of him. However, no characterization is appropriate. It is not the function of the media to declare the political temperament of foreign leaders. They should present the news and let readers reach their own judgment about who is moderate. The media is describing Abbas as moderate, so that readers would think there is some justification for US or Israeli policy of strengthening Abbas vis-à-vis his rivals. The effort to turn news reports into propaganda, and false propaganda, at that, builds sentiment for false policy. Nor does he get strengthened. AN 80-YEAR WAR THE TIMES DOESN'T KNOW EXISTS The NY Times speculated that the Gaza rockets could spark a war. (Is the bombardment not war?) It also wonders whether Israel had responded disproportionately to the rockets fired at it. Apparently not -- the rockets keep coming. Couldn't the NY Times figure that out? "Disproportionate" is a ridiculous standard, giving comfort to aggressors and discomfort to their victims. One usually wins by disproportionate means. The war the Times fears may start has been going on against Zionism since 1920, or 86 years, unless one considers this just a part of jihad, that has run for 1,300 years! NY TIMES ACKNOWLEDGES ISRAELI FINDINGS For a couple of days, the Times repeated the accusation that Israel caused the Gaza beach deaths, without acknowledging Israel's finding that it did not do it and the Arabs probably did. On 6/14, the NY Times belatedly acknowledged the IDF finding. But it also reported that Human Rights Watch (HRW) reached the opposite conclusion. Israel's Chief of Staff rejected having outsiders involved in the Israeli inquiry. He said his people are professionals, and don't need assistance (Steven Erlanger & Ian Fisher). The Chief of Staff doesn't understand. It's not a matter of needing assistance. It is one of getting an independent inspector, to overcome the conflict of interest in a self-investigation. On the other hand, given the international bias against Israel, which the Times might have reported that HRW shares, who could be trusted to be truly independent and to decide with integrity? Would HRW related its report's specifics? PRISONERS' PLAN The plan, called a peace plan, refers 14 times to resistance, the Arab code word for terrorist aggression against Israel. By contrast, Oslo and the Road Map called for peaceful resolution of the conflict. The earlier plans call for dissolving terrorist organizations, whereas the prisoners' plan calls for uniting them for resistance. Under the plan, civilians in any area not part of Israel before the 1967 war are subject to terrorism, but the plan the does not state any recognition of Israel. The area subject to terrorism includes Jerusalem and any parts of the Territories that Israel retains. A plan for terrorism is hardly a peace plan. The plan emphasizes the admission to Israel of all the Arab refugee descendants, eight times. Once admitted, the Arabs would constitute a majority and take over the country. Naturally, they would end the Jewish state if not also the Jews. That is the platform of those prisoners' organizations. Four times the plan calls for releasing the prisoners. (Aha! Thoughtful of the prisoners.) How does it make for peace to release unrepentant serial killers? Were this a decent world, it would denounce Abbas' plan (IMRA, 6/14 from ZOA). THE QUESTION NOT ASKED The Israeli Air Force bombed a car of terrorists carrying rockets (IMRA, 6/14). This bombing also injured many other Arabs. The assumption is that Israel bombed too heavily. But the car had explosives in it. Might they not have caused casualties? P.A. POLICE KILL P.A. ARABS P.A. police shot dead two Arabs whose cars did not stop at a roadblock. One Arab had stolen the car. The other, suspected of criminality, tried to ram police (IMRA, 6/14). When Israeli police shoot Arabs who run a roadblock or try to run the police over, the usual pro-Arab sympathizers complain that Israel is unreasonable, and they denounce roadblocks. There is no foreign sympathy for those Arabs when shot by P.A. police. Neither is there foreign denunciation of P.A. roadblocks. Let there be disinvestments from the P.A. by those US Church groups that purport to have a social conscience. ISRAEL TELLS HAMAS TO STORE ITS ROCKETS Israeli Defense Min. Peretz advised Hamas to return its rockets to its storerooms. He also informed Hamas that Israel knows where these storerooms are. The implication is that if Hamas resumed their use, Israel would blow up the storerooms. That means that Israel would allow Hamas to keep its rockets for use whenever it wants to (IMRA, 6/15). "...Either there will be absolute quiet, or there will be an overwhelming and singular response" Defense Minister Amir Peretz said to reporters as broadcast on Israel Television's Mabat News program on 14 June." Next day, four rockets struck Peretz' home town. His bluff was called. Then a fifth one struck, destroying the roof of a factory and wounding someone (IMRA, 6/15). If Israel knows where these storerooms are, why doesn't it blow them all up now? Israel's threats all are bluffs. The Arabs know it. If the media were honorable instead of ideological, it would expose the emptiness of government threats. HADITHA: WERE CIVILIANS MASSACRED & BY WHOM? Haditha residents' entertainment: watching Iraqi insurgents execute people, and then buying the DVD of the executions, that afternoon. Some civilians were found slain there, after marines fought there. The marines claim they merely returned fire according to their rules of engagement. Opponents of the war, such as the Times and Rep. Murtha did not wait for investigation before joining in the accusation of murder. Bodies were piled up. However, the Islamist enemy is known to place bodies so as falsely to claim their enemies committed a massacre. The media should await an investigation or undertake an investigation, before rendering a verdict. This is like Israel being accused of having committed a massacre that
either didn't occur or was done by the Arabs to themselves. As soon as
the accusation is made, Israel apologizes and the media and UNO accuse
Israel. Then Israel is found innocent (NY Sun, 6/15, Ed.). The
exoneration is muted, and hardly redeems Israel's reputation.
Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several
web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on
Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target
overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him
at richardshulman5@aol.com.
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RETURN TO GAZA: WHY DISENGAGEMENT FAILED
Posted by Gerald M. Steinberg, June 29, 2006. |
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This article appeared in the National Post
(www.canada.com/components/print.aspx?id= 759aea19-42e5-4620-b7af-ef78a6d71370) |
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As an early Israeli supporter of unilateral disengagement, I admit that this plan, like the earlier Oslo "peace process," has failed. Hopes that the unprecedented move, including the dismantling of all Israeli military bases, checkpoints and even civilian houses in Gaza would reduce the violence and promote mutual accommodation were naive. Almost a year after the exit, attacks against Israelis continue to escalate, Palestinian society is in a state of advanced anarchy and the security pledges from Egypt and Europe, brokered by the U.S., have proven worthless. The murder and kidnapping of Israeli soldiers by Palestinian terrorists, who launched the attack from a tunnel dug from a house in Gaza under the border, was the last straw. Even before then, the dozens of rockets raining down on houses and schools every week, and numerous other terror efforts, had already signalled the approaching end of this unique experiment in conflict reduction. Instead of taking advantage of the opportunity for progress, Palestinians moved their rocket launching teams into the most densely populated neighbourhoods, goading Israel into responding. And whenever a Palestinian was killed, even when Israel was not involved, they could count on political groups such as Human Rights Watch to condemn the Israeli Defense Force, regardless of the evidence. The role of the Palestinian population in supporting terror is central, but the international community also bears considerable responsibility for the latest disaster. For years, the Europeans, the UN and others had provided massive support -- financial as well as political -- to PLO leader Yasser Arafat in the hope that he would make peace. After that proved to be a mirage and Arafat died, the members of the Quartet (the European-inspired framework designed to push hopes for peace co-operatively) pressed numerous schemes to prop-up Arafat's successors. These failed to achieve anything of significance. Without skipping a beat, as soon as the Israelis left, the Palestinians extended the terrorist infrastructure to encompass the resources they had gained. A few months later, the entry of Hamas officials, pledged to radical Islam and the eradication of Israel, sped up this process. As the attacks accelerated, and no evidence for a change for the better was forthcoming, Israelis also rediscovered the mistake of giving responsibility for their survival to outsiders. The security arrangements negotiated with Egypt and Europe, which accompanied the withdrawal of Israeli military forces from Gaza in August 2005, have all collapsed. The first agreement was signed with the Egyptians, after former prime minister Ariel Sharon overruled many advisors, and agreed to remove Israeli troops from the 13-kilometer border strip between Gaza and Egypt. The IDF had been very active in stopping Palestinians from smuggling explosives, terrorists and various anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles under the border. Although turning over this responsibility to Cairo was a calculated risk, the hope was by making this move, Israel would be seen to have ended the occupation of Gaza. And perhaps the Egyptian presence along the border and inside Gaza would encourage the Palestinians to turn their energies from war to peace. In parallel, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice brokered a separate security arrangement covering the Rafiah crossing. On Nov. 15, 2005, Rice pressed then prime minister Sharon to agree to a joint Palestinian-European Union arrangement in this very sensitive area. The U.S. was responding to pressures from the Europeans, who desperately wanted a major role in what was seen as the latest "peace process." A short time after the agreement was signed, Palestinians bulldozed a breach in the barrier along the Philadelphi corridor and moved freely into and out of Egypt. The 70 European "observers" were shunted aside and chased away by various Palestinian gunmen. As a result, the smuggling of weapons and terrorists has grown into a torrent, and these agreements have joined many others in the dustbin of Middle East peace efforts. After paying a high price for these hopes, Israelis have rediscovered the fundamental need for direct control over their own security. This lesson has been learned on many occasions -- in 1948, when no one protected them from a mass invasion that almost crushed the nascent country; in 1967, when the UN suddenly removed the peacekeepers stationed in the Sinai following the previous war; and in 1973, when Egyptian forces were able to use weapons that the American-brokered cease-fire was supposed to have kept far away from the front. But after a few years, the combination of international pressure on Israel and the hopes that perhaps there will be changes this time, have led to another round of Palestinian attacks and a reluctant Israeli return to responsibility for its own security. It is still far too early to know how the return to Gaza will end. But even if the kidnapped soldier is released, the Israeli forces cannot simply turn around and leave Gaza, waiting for the next attempt. Israel is unlikely to reoccupy the poor and hate-filled cities, but the days when Palestinian groups could simply drive from Egypt into Gaza with weapons and terrorists are over. Reliance on outsiders -- particularly Egypt and the European Union -- for security is over, and Israel has no choice but to resume control over Gaza's borders. This will at least help to prevent more terror and kidnappings, and perhaps eventually convince some Palestinians that the only option they have is to take control over their own society, and finally make the compromises necessary for real peace. Gerald M. Steinberg is editor of NGO Monitor and director of the Program on Conflict Management at Bar-Ilan University. |
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FOREIGN BACKERS OF PEACE NOW
Posted by Steven Shamrak, June 29, 2006. |
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This was written by Scott Shiloh and is called "Foreign
Governments are Key Backers of Peace Now." It appeared in Arutz-Sheva
-- www.IsraelNN.com Peace Now, a far-left Israeli-based organization promoting Israeli withdrawal to pre-1967 borders and removal of all Jewish communities in Judea/Samaria, is largely funded by foreign governments. The organization, which spends large sums of money finding and detailing every new Israeli structure in Judea and Samaria, is effectively on the payroll of at least three European governments, according to Israeli investigative reporter David Bedein? Bedein said a member of the Finnish Parliament told him the money was forwarded to Finland by the U.S. government. Bedein said another source of financing for Peace Now is the economic Cooperation Foundation, a group funded directly by the European Union. The EFC was the subject of controversy last year when the Israeli media revealed that the organization was funding the activities of left-wing MK Yossi Beilin (Meretz). The foreign governments which fund Peace Now, such as Britain and Norway, are fundamentally opposed to the existence of all Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria. (Effectively, they oppose the existence of the state of Israel. This is an open violation of the sovereignty of an independent state - Israel. It is bordering upon a declaration of war! The Holocaust was not enough, they are determined to finish job!)
...and what UN is worrying about. "The Secretary-General calls on Israel to respect international law and to ensure that its actions are proportionate and do not put civilians at grave risk," - First, the UN must make a strong uncompromising ultimatum to perpetrators and sponsors of terrorism - Hamas, PLO, Al Qaeda, Jamal Islamia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria and other 'quiet achievers'! Second, eradicate the internal anti-Israel infestation of anti-Semitism within the UN! Yes, I know, it is too much to ask! Business as Usual. Hamas recently declared an end to an unofficial truce with Israel. An 8-man terrorist force crawled through an underground tunnel into Israel. Two Israeli soldiers were killed, four others wounded and one is abducted during the raid. Hamas endorsed and played a leading role in the long-planned attack. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has urged the United States to press Israel to stop military escalation against the 'Palestinians'. US Urges Israel Restraint. THE international community of hypocrites urged restraint as thousands of Israeli troops massed on the Gaza border poised for an offensive over the kidnapping of a teenage soldier. (For 58 year, only Israel has being exercising restraint. It is time to get rid of our enemies once and for all and free Jewish Land!) Food for Thought Israel's consul general in New York, Aryeh Mekel, has stated that those American Jews who do not support Olmert's realignment plan "will be told to keep quiet." - The president of Australia Zionist Federation, Philip Chester, also said that Jews in Australia should not protest against deportation of Jews from Judea and Samaria, because it will not change anything. - So much for the democracy and freedom of speech! - When Jews do not challenge apathetic leadership, National disasters happen. There are many compelling examples in Jewish history. Guns Supplied by Israel to kill Jews. Members of PA President
Mahmoud Abbas' personal guard, "Force 17", used Israel's weapons to
shoot Israelis this week. Abu Yousuf, a senior member of Force 17,
said bluntly that the weapons will be used to shoot Jews, and added
that the terror organization may share the weaponry with Hamas as
well, if its 3,000-member militia is absorbed into the general PA
police force. Red Cross has Done it Again. Israel's aid organization, Magen David Adom has been admitted as a member of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. The Palestine Red Crescent has also become a member. Israel first tried to join the International Red Cross Movement in 1949, but Middle Eastern politics have kept Israel out. (It took 58 years for Israel to get to this point of 'recognition'. It took no time for non-existent, fictitious anti-Israel entity to be recognised by the Red Cross. Now is a very good time for Israel to resign from this deeply anti-Semitic and anti-Israel organization!) The War is Declared. The armed wing of PA governing group Hamas said its forces aided the attack, using firearms and bombs. spokesman for Gaza's Popular Resistance Committee said they carried out the attack on an Israeli army position near the Gaza Strip. (Do not kid yourself, the war is declared by Hamas government! When will Israel clear Jewish land of our enemies?) Egypt and Jordan rejected Olmert's 'Realignment'. President Hosni Mubarak and King Abdullah warn Israel against unilateral steps - realignment plan for the West Bank.
Steven Shamrak was born in the former Soviet Union (USSR) and
participated in the Moscow Zionist "refusenik" movement. For the last
3 years, he has been publishing internet editorial letters on the
Arab-Israeli conflict -- independently, not as a member of any
organization or political movement. He can be reached by email at
StevenShamrak@mail2world.com
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OPERATION "SUMMER RAINS" -- TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE
Posted by Benjamin Svetitsky, June 29, 2006. |
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From: Professors for a Strong Israel
Professors for a Strong Israel deplores the extreme procrastination that preceded the start of military action against the terrorists in the Gaza Strip. This delay served to increase their motivation and led to increased missile fire against Israeli towns and, ultimately, the recent incidents of kidnap and murder. We reject the folly of waiting for international "legitimacy" before acting to defend Israeli citizens exposed to terrorism. We demand that Operation "Summer Rains" continue beyond the rescue of the kidnapped soldier. We demand that it continue beyond elimination of the threat of the Kassam missiles. Likewise, it is unacceptable that the ultimate goal of the operation be the surrender of the Land of Israel to the "good terrorist" Abu Mazen. We demand that this operation continue until the full and final expulsion of the Palestinian Terror Authority from the Land of Israel. Contact Professors for a Strong Israel by telephone at 050-551 8940 or by email at bqs@julian.tau.ac.il |
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PROTECTING THE REGIME VERSUS PROTECTING THE JEWS
Posted by Professor Eugene Narrett, June 29, 2006. |
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We read that four IAF jets have buzzed the northern palace of jihad - host Bashir Asad, dictator son of the Syrian dictator who oversaw the murder of Israeli POWs on the Golan in 1973. We read that dozens of Hamas 'officials' have been taken into custody following the murder of 18-year old Israeli hitchhiker, Eliyahu Asheri. Have you seen the photo of this youth the savages murdered? They have murdered too many Jews. It's been a long time since it's been too many... Are you disgusted by the incremental, tippy-toe 'response' by the IDF led by the unilateral surrender artists, Ehud Olmart and Amir Peretz? You are for they are far beneath contempt; they are the face of everything contemptible, cowardly, self-hating and corrupt in Israeli politics, the cringing of the galut that is only 'proud' when beating up self-respecting Jews. So, the IAF has buzzed the palace of the main state harbor of jihadists; they've sent him a message and a warning; another in the endless chain of hollow 'don't do it again or you'll be sorry, maybe' messages in which the Israeli 'elites' excel. If they had any self-respect or concern for other Jews, if they had any crediblity of fortitude Bashir Asad's palaces would be smoking ruins right now, and all the Hamas 'officials' that have been arrested would be dead from bullets to the head in payment for the execution-murder of that beautiful young man. Nothing else will do him respect or do his family justice. Nothing else will deter similar kidnappings and murders of Jews of all ages by the savages which surround and infest Israel. The index of the regime's hollowness, cowardice and imminent collapse is its addiction to sending 'warning messages' to savages that are publicly committed to the murder of Jews. Until or unless they strike them as they need to be stricken, off the face of the earth, they will themselves be accomplices in this bloody fiasco they have inflicted upon the Jewish people. They are not for peace, but for war because they do not punish and preempt the enemy. Now, with the abominatons of islam so blatant in our faces is the time to crush the guilty into the ground so that future such will be deterred. Flatten Gaza, scrape it clean and rebuild it full of beautiful and productive Jewish towns. Professor Eugene Narrett's new book, Israel and The Endtimes is now
available at this web site:
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FRIENDS OF GUSH KATIF CAMPAIGN UPDATE #1
Posted by Buddy Macy, June 28, 2006. |
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First, a message from Dror Vanunu, International Coordinator, Friends of Gush Katif / Director, Gush Katif Committee (gkatif@netvision.net.il) "We are excited to witness the launch of a campaign fund in North America, from which 100% of the money will help the expellees of Gush Katif. I have been working closely with Buddy Macy and have total confidence in his integrity and honesty -- and in his sincere intentions of helping us. The video presentation at the commemoration in Jerusalem should be tremendously moving. I can't wait to see the faces and hear the voices of all of our friends in America and Canada. From all of the expellees from Gush Katif, thank you very much for your generosity!" Dror Dror and his family were/are victims of the "disengagement" this past August. He is dedicated to helping his fellow expellees live as normal a life as possible in these more than trying times! Since the launch of the campaign this past Wednesday on the Middle East Report radio show (www.zoaphilly.org), and on the Internet this past Thursday, I have received quite a few notes of encouragement, including the two that follow, about which nothing needs to be said: Shalom, As if that weren't enough, the following is Anita's response to my reply: Shalom, Buddy, Since the launch of the campaign last week, the fund has raised $2,900. Included among the contributions is an $1800 gift from the Eshet Chayil Foundation of New Jersey. As was explained in the first campaign email, we plan to produce a video that we intend to show on a giant television screen in Jerusalem during the commemoration ceremonies. Included on the video will be short greetings from donors of a minimum of $180* to Friends of Gush Katif, who will have emailed me a digital movie clip. Our goal is to have a 90-minute video filled from start to finish with best wishes to the expellees from their Jewish and Christian brothers and sisters around the world. If one does not have access to a video camera, he or she will be able to mail or email us a photograph to be included on the video, with a caption created underneath. For more information about the campaign, or to offer your welcomed assistance, please call toll-free: 800-BUDDY-NY (800-283-3969) from the U.S. or Canada. Outside North America, please call: 973-785-0057. Please forward this email to everyone on your list! Thanking you in advance for your most generous of support, Buddy Macy Friends of Gush Katif
Please write the following in the note section of your check: "We give generously!" Please email your video clip or photo to: vegibud@aol.com. *Please note: Gifts of any amount will be greatly appreciated! Contact Buddy Macy by email at VegiBud@aol.com |
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PROTECTING ISRAEL FROM VICTORY
Posted by Professor Eugene Narrett, June 28, 2006. |
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Mahmoud Abas' military 'wing,' Fatah's al aksa martyr's brigade boasts that it has shot a rocket bearing a bio-chemical warhead into Israel. This is quite possible and the public response of the Olmert administration minimizing the incident is predictable. Only a terrorist attack resulting in major Jewish casualties might, -- repeat, might compel the client regime of Foggy Bottom to respond with significant military force against the jihadists who are in open war against Israel. The Olmert - Peres regime is not going to accept the reality of this until it happens and when it does they cadres in the media and academia will blare that it is because Israel has not withdrawn fast or far enough toward the ocean. That's how intelligent the "enlightened ones" in Israel are. The last thing the Olmert - Barak (Supreme Court Judge and militant secularist Aharon Barak) regime wants is to be put in a position where it needs to save face and thus retain its chokehold on Israeli society by meaningfully striking the Arabs. If this clique was to take a major bite out of terrorism it would damage the regime's excuse and means for 'justifying' the alienation of the central portions of the Jewish heritage of land and holy sites. The suicidal insanity of the jihadists is less mad and more reality-based than it seems. It is based partly on an accurate assessment of the fact that the dominant elites in Israel intend on destroying the Jewish aspects of the state and that therefore terrorism can be escalated with success if it is done steadily with occasional spikes, like the kidnapping of Jewish soldiers built in to move the process along. The "Palestinian" terrorist groups are not only pawns of Arab states and ruling elites but of the Israeli secular elites that want, 1) to preempt the dawn of a truly Jewish and self-respecting Israel, and 2) to maintain their own socio-political dominance despite their small numbers. This is why the current occupation of small parts of Gaza by the IDF is so limp, so lacking in major firepower directed against all areas that harbor terrorists and all hostile population centers. This is why the IDF and Olmert regime already, as the Labor "Zionists" did in 1948 are pleading with the Arabs not to flee to Egypt but to stay in the Gaza area: they need to be as close as possible to the Jewish towns they must attack for further withdrawals to be justified until Israel reaches the size that the State deems adequate for its complete servility while also retaining utility as a target for global jihad and a steady source of computer, laser, military and medical technology. That's the game. Instead of taking grim satisfaction in the imminent destabilization and fall of the Mubarak and Hussein regimes in Egypt and Jordan respectively and their replacement by blatantly jihadist cliques whose activities might embarass Israel into a meaningful military strike, Israel's government is now aligned with American and French diplomats in laboring to extricate the kidnapped Israeli soldier as a means to saving the puppet regimes in Cairo and Amman. Of course this self-despising treachery is self-defeating for, like the expulsion of the Jews from Gush Katif it emboldens Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran and only brings closer the inevitable major attack that will force the anti-Jewish client regimes in Jerusalem to strike back decisively or to lose their hold over the IDF and the Jews. Make book on it: when the terrible attack comes, as in 1948, the forces of 'havlaga' (which is mainly a rationalization of the elite's refusal to be Jewish and embrace the birthright) will counter attack only as much as they need to do to maintain their power and facade of legitimacy. And so there will be graver and larger terror strikes until the entire unnatural charade, the wall of whitewashed plaster is swept away by a storm. Still this game plays on: Israeli reports, aping and aped by the world media, in consonant with jihadist bluster, emphasize the 'dangers' of Israel attacking its enemies throughout Gaza. Mines, booby traps, .... blather. These are serious obstacles only if the politicized IDF, true to form from 1948 to Jenin 2002 uses its ground troops as cannon fodder and refrains from making maximal use of its air force. This of course is what should be done and would reduce the jihadist enclave to the condition of Dresden in late March 1945. Maybe Rice should order Olmert to do this since it would save Mubarak from the nightmare western diplomacy and islamic imperialism has created in Gaza and so many other places. Professor Eugene Narrett's new book, Israel and The Endtimes is now
available at this web site:
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THE ONGOING WAR AGAINST REALITY
Posted by Mrla 26, June 28, 2006. |
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This article was written by Henryk M. Broder and it appeared today
in Der Spiegel
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Many are treating the apparent recognition of Israel by Hamas as a sign of hope. It's not. Indeed, the Palestinians have no such intention -- and have left Israel with only military options. Once again the Palestinians are in the process of shattering the Israeli dream of peace. The building of a tunnel under the border, the attack on an army post and the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier haven't just served to stir things up in the stagnating Middle East war. The attack also served to bring the Israelis face to face with the limits of their power. And to provide the Palestinians with a short-lived though uplifting feeling of superiority. It's difficult, after all, to categorize an assault on an army unit as an act of terrorism. 
Recent history has seen the Palestinians firing homemade, short-range Kassam rockets from Gaza into Israel and Israel responding with "targeted assassinations" -- which have often resulted in civilian deaths. That was, though it may sound cynical, Middle East business as usual -- and also mirrored the situation in the north where Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon has hardly resulted in instant peace there. All or nothing Now, however, the conflict has reached a new level. The Israeli withdrawal from Gaza last summer has more than anything motivated militant Palestinians to demonstrate to Israel that the conflict is not primarily about territory, the end of the occupation and the return to the 1967 borders. Rather, it's about all or nothing. It's about the control, not the division, of the region between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Were the Palestinians to invest only a tiny percentage of the energy they consume in internal conflict and resistance against Israelis into the reconstruction of the Palestinian Authority, the West Bank and Gaza would be much better off. And the Israelis? Those who believed that unilateral action and the construction of a fence would result in the security that negotiations have been unable to provide are now being confronted with the bitter reality. Fences and walls cannot provide absolute security -- and no matter how high such barriers are, they can still be dug under. The question they are asking themselves is this: "What is cheaper: ending or continuing the occupation?" What's the point of military withdrawal when those Palestinians who want a peaceful resolution are unable to assert themselves -- and those Palestinians who want to continue fighting merely feel vindicated and encouraged? As usual in such moments -- with the tunnel at the end of the light coming ever closer -- those who have a stake begin to clutch at whatever straw they can. The Europeans are once again trying to whitewash things. One hears a lot these days about the so-called "prisoners' document" -- that mysterious paper in which representatives from Hamas and Fatah have agreed on a common position on Israel. It is said to be nothing less than an "indirect recognition" of Israel. Ignoring the rules of democracy Leaving aside for a moment what exactly an "indirect recognition" means in practice -- no attacks within the 1967 Green Line? No attacks on Saturdays and holidays? No attacks on women and children? -- one salient fact is being forgotten. Israel and the PLO have already long since recognized each other in the Oslo Accords and all the agreements that have come since. One of the basic rules in any democracy is that a new government accepts the treaties made by the old. Germany's Christian Democrats, for example, didn't annul the agreements struck by Social Democrat Chancellor Willy Brandt with East Bloc countries in the 1960s even if, when in opposition, they did everything in their power to torpedo the policy. For Hamas, however, such rules don't seem to apply. The "prisoners' document" is a paper that is supposed to re-establish and solidify the "national unity" of the Palestinians. Inferring therein a recognition of Israel -- no matter how indirect or implicit it may be -- merely shows a tendency toward self-delusion. Nobody has yet seen the entire paper, but those bits that have been released are just as incoherent as they are explicit. And everything is discussed. Indeed, the only thing that doesn't appear is any mention of a recognition of Israel -- neither in pre nor in post 1967 borders. Only one conclusion can be drawn: Even after 40 years of occupation, the Palestinians have still not accepted reality and still dream of a return to the way things used to be. Indeed, if there is a clear message provided by the paper, it is this: The Palestinians do indeed want a two-state solution. One in those regions -- the Gaza Strip and the West Bank -- occupied in 1967. And one in that region that is today known as Israel. One shouldn't forget that the PLO was founded in 1964 with the goal of freeing Palestine from the Zionists -- three years prior to the Six Day War when Gaza was still under Egyptian control and the West Bank was a part of Jordan. Either complete victory or utter defeat Back then, talking about the "Occupied Territories" meant Haifa, Tel Aviv and Beer-Sheva. And in this respect nothing has really changed to this day. The only difference between Hamas and Fatah -- which is overlooked by "the document" -- is the question of how Israel should be defeated: either militarily or through the implementation of a "right of return" policy. Israel therefore has the choice as to whether it is wiped from the map either in battle, or by peaceful means. Whoever hopes Israel will embrace these two alternatives is kidding themselves: there is no third possibility. Israel has no other choice but to stand tough because every climb down and withdrawal is interpreted as weakness. Furthermore the word "compromise" is a foreign word in the Arab world. You either prevail or go down in a blaze of glory. For this reason a "ceasefire" is the most Hamas is prepared to offer Israel, which the Europeans insist on misinterpreting as the first step towards recognition. Rather, it's merely a tactical pause in the war against Israel. News about the new confrontation on the border between Gaza and Israel has largely displaced reports of the looming "humanitarian catastrophe" in Gaza. It's also important to find out how a government that can't even provide for its own people is getting the means to assemble, clothe and arm a new 3,000 man force. And who is arming and paying the salaries of these masked, hyper-agile young men who are storming the streets wielding bazookas? Is that what a "humanitarian catastrophe" looks like? Hamas, though a problem for Israel, is a catastrophe for the
Palestinians. It's a difference that no document can set aside.
Contact Mrla 26 at mrla26@aol.com
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'PEACE PLAN' IS WAR PLAN
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 28, 2006. |
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Matthew Kalman's "Palestine Accord seen producing little progress" (SF Chron, 6.28.06) grossly mis-represents the "accord" that terrorist prisoners in Israeli jails cobbled together in order to manipulate Abbas to get them out of jail. International media have referred to this accord as a "peace plan"; but what the jailed terrorists announced was nothing more than a declaration of war against Israel and a recommitment to Arab terrorism's "higher goal" of destroying Israel. In six separate clauses, the declaration calls for acts of terrorism against Israel, to be conducted in conjunction with civil disturbances, negotiations with Israel run by Abbas (something that Iran and its client the Palestinian Islamic Jihad does not accept), as well as an international diplomatic campaign in cooperation with NGO allies intended to delegitimize and demonize Israel. The terrorists call for the establishment of a new joint terrorist organization called the "Popular Resistance Front" that is to be composed of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah terrorists. This new group's job will be "to lead and engage in resistance (aka. terror warfare) against the occupation and to unify and coordinate action and resistance..." Such coordination will simply enhance the efficiency of their terror war against Israel. The document also insists that Israel accept the so-called "right of return" of the so-called "refugees"; but this demand in reality means that in exchange for a temporary cessation of terror attacks against its citizens, Israel agrees to its own national destruction. The so-called "right of return" is a demand that Israel accept the unimpeded in-migration of millions of hostile, foreign- born Arabs to Israel's sovereign territory. Finally, in a decidedly self-serving fashion, the convicted murderers emphatically call for their own release from Israeli jails and see their release as "a sacred national duty." So convicted Palestinian mass murderers met in an Israeli prison yard to recommit themselves to their war for the destruction of Israel, and the international press call it a 'peaace plan'. David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com |
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THE PALESTINIANS LOST THE LAST ELECTION
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 28, 2006. |
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The LA Times article by Laura King and Ken Ellingwood "Israelis punch into Gaza..." (SF Chron, 6.28.06) touches briefly upon a Mid-east 'fact of life' which bears some clarification. The terrorist leadership in the Arab world, from the Hajj Amin el Husseini, grand Mufti of Jerusalem in the pre-state era, to Fatah and the PLO and Arafat and now Hamas and Abbas, have never disagreed as to their "higher goal": the destruction of Israel. Disagreement between so-called 'moderates' and radicals has been whether to pretend to make peace now and gain some political advantages or to keep up a terrorist assault with no pretense of peace, so that Jews are killed almost daily. In that context, Arafat was indeed a 'moderate'. He sought a superficial political solution so that he could muster his terror forces behind the safety of a semi-autonomous Palestinian Authority and unleash them with greater efficacy when the time was ripe....but, as his adjutant Faisal Husseini said, never loosing sight of the 'higher goal'. Hamas and numerous other terror groups opposed even this faux-peacemaking, and used terror to derail Arafat's pseudo-peace talks. Now we see the same schism within Hamas. Although he has not eschewed the Hamas Covenant and its higher goal to destroy Israel and genocide its Jews, Isma'il Haniyeh is scrambling to quell his own terror forces and keep them from undermining his recent political gains. He is playing the role that Arafat played. His immediate superior, Khaled Mash'al, safely esconced in Damascus, made an end-run around Haniyeh, and ordered the recent attack by Hamas terror forces loyal to him, in order to keep the terrorism alive and active, and to prevent Haniyeh from gaining too much power, even though this most recent unprovoked attack and kidnapping may result in a massive defeat for the Hamas forces in the Gaza Strip. For Mash'al, most of the Hamas leadership, and most of the Hamas terror army, just the slightest hint of resolution, even though it may be nothing more than a subterfuge to further the 'higher goal' later on, cannot be tolerated. The immortal words of the Hajj live on: "Murder the Jews. Murder them all!...Kill the Jews - kill them with your hands, kill them with your teeth - this is well pleasing to Allah." (Berlin Radio, 1942). For the Arab terrorist leaders, terrorism is more important than statehood. Killing Jews is more important than Palestinian political self-determination. Fatah did not lose the last election. The Palestinian people did. David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com |
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IDF CONFIRMS PRC REPORT OF ELIYAHU ASHERI DEATH
Posted by Avodah 15, June 28, 2006. |
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The IDF confirmed early Thursday a report the Popular Resistance Committees issued from Gaza that it had executed Eliyahu Asheri, 18, of Itamar, who was kidnapped earlier this week in the West Bank. IDF combat engineers and Shin Bet agents, acting on intelligence, found Asheris body Wednesday night in an abandoned car in an open field outside of Ramallah. The youth appeared to have been shot to death, and initial findings indicated that he may have been killed as early as Sunday. Asheri family has been notified. After Israel fears came true Wednesday when a spokesman for the PRC in the Gaza Strip revealed an authentic copy of missing teenager Asheri identity card to the press, confirming claims that he had been kidnapped, the police elite counterterrorist squad raided a home in Ramallah in the afternoon and arrested a fugitive, who may have provided the information on the location of Asheri body. butchered in front of TV cameras if the IDF operation in Gaza did not stop. our patience is running out,he said. Contact Avodah 15 at avodah15@aol.com |
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GAZA INVASION UPDATE
Posted by Aryeh Zelasko, June 28, 2006. |
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This more or less says it all. I wonder how long the before they send in the troops with the wooden stick who will yell bang, bang so as not to get the guns dirty. It is really a shame because there are still some good soldiers left in the IDF. I wonder how long they can stand being made the fools of the world. |
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From Shmuel
No casualties for the enemy.
Two islamics killed while arming a mine in their home... Perhaps it is the post war style of making war. If you know anything else let us know. Everybody here is in utter disbelief. SHmuel Aryeh Zelasko lives in Beitar Illit, south of Jerusalem. He is Director of Sales and Marketing of Israel Visit (www.israelvisit.co.il) which provides information and an internet buying facility for American visitors to Israel. |
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HAMAS AND THE SHALIT ABDUCTION
Posted by Israel Zwick, June 28, 2006. |
| This article was written by Tashbih Sayyed http://web.israelinsider.com/views/8756.htm |
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Can a war be won without understanding the enemy? No. Israel's continuing failure to stem persistent Hamas terrorism is a testimony to the fact that the Jewish state is still in dark about the real character of their enemy -- Arabs living in the historical Jewish lands. Time and again Israeli leaders have exhibited their profound ignorance of the Arab's culture of terror that nourishes the Hamas mentality. The Israeli efforts to withdraw from southern Lebanon and the unilateral disengagement to the 1967 lines around Gaza Strip have all been carried out under the perception that such gestures will achieve peace with the Arabs. But in reality, it worked the other way round. The Arabs perceived Israel's peace moves as its weakness. The Israelis have been forced to pay in blood, the price of their leaders' failure to understand the culture of terror. In this existential war for Israel, it is vital to keep Hamas' constitution in mind. A video released on the Hamas website clearly emphasizes the Arab Islamic ideology -- the subjugation of Judeo-Christian lands under Islam. Moreover, Israel's withdrawal from Gaza has been presented as a success of their policy of terror. The way Israel "ran" from Gaza after terror is presented as the prototype for future Israeli and western behavior in the face of Islamic force. Transcripts of Hamas' video leave no doubt about the true agenda of the Islamists in which the future Palestinian State, being pushed as the "only" solution for the Arab-Israeli conflict, will be a vanguard. The video boasts, "We will rule the nations, by Allah's will, the USA will be conquered, Israel will be conquered, Rome and Britain will be conquered. The Jihad for Allah... is the way of Truth and the way for Salvation and the way, which will lead us to crush the Jews and expel them from our country Palestine. Just as the Jews ran from Gaza, the Americans will run from Iraq and Afghanistan and the Russians will run from Chechnya, and the Indian will run from Kashmir, and our children will be released from Guantanamo. The prisoners will be released by Allah's will, not by peaceful means and not by agreements, but they will be released by the sword, they will be released by the gun". Sunday's (June 25, 2006) pre-dawn attack by Hamas' military wing against Gilad Shalit's tank in which the terrorists succeeded in abducting him and killing two of his crew is just another example of Hamas' culture of terror. Proving once again my premise that talks, negotiations, dialogue and peace gestures are tools of a civilized culture. In a culture of terror these methods are a sign of weakness. In this culture, murderers are lionized as Gaziz (victors), killers who die in the pursuance of their bloody trade are called Shaheeds (martyrs) who are believed to be rewarded by Allah with 72 virgins and a state in which the followers of one faith are considered as the most perfect and the others sub-human (Dhimmis) is considered as a Dar ul Amn (House of Peace). The Islamist culture of terror is in unambiguous with regard to Jews. An act of terrorism against Jews is not considered terrorism. Most all newspapers in the Muslim lands support Arab terrorism against Jews. They justify attacks on the Israeli citizens as a legitimate act of jihad (holy war). According to a fatwa (edict) issued by Egyptian Mufti Sheikh Ali Goma'a, "whoever blows himself up is a Shaheed". Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, one of the most influential contemporary Sunni Muslim scholars is a radical supporter of Islamist terrorism and promoter of anti-Semitism. According to a research article, "he has called for targeting American forces and civilians in Iraq and provided religious justification for the use of suicide bombers against Israeli civilians. His fatwa authorizing the use of women in suicide attacks -- an ironic reflection of his "advanced" concept of women's capabilities -- provides religious sanction for Hamas when it began enlisting female "martyrs." The culture of terror that symbolizes Hamas, believes and teaches that the Jews have killed God's prophets and oppose justice and righteousness. According to this belief, and throughout history, radical Islam has inflicted enormous damage on the human race. They have achieved this by engaging in plots against other nations and ethnic groups by perpetrating destruction, evil and malice. The theology that has given birth to the Hamas mindset teaches that the infidels (non-Muslims) have been the source of such deadly diseases as the plague and typhus. They believe that Christians poisoned their water wells, and thus killed them. Can a dialogue be initiated with a culture that professes and ideology that is anti-Christian and anti-Semitic? No. Unless this culture is cleansed of their hatred for non-Muslims of all religions, nothing productive can emerge from any amount of talking or negotiating. They need to be dealt with an iron hand. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is correct in his declaration that there will not be any negotiations with Hamas over the release of IDF soldier, Gilad Shalit. "This is not a matter of negotiations, this is not a matter of bargaining," Olmert said in a speech to a gathering in Jerusalem. Olmert said Israel would fight Islamic extremists and warned that it could hit militants wherever they are. The Shalit abduction should serve as a warning that so long as Hamas is being treated as an authentic member of a civilized society, Israeli will never be able to secure peace and prosperity for its citizens. Hamas must be treated as what it is -- a group of terrorists. This past Sunday's killings and kidnapping should be taken as further proof that by rewarding terrorism with appeasement, land giveaways and negotiations, the Islamists have become further convinced that terrorism is a legitimate response in their quest to achieve their ultimate and sinister goals. Contact Israel Zwick at israel.zwick@earthlink.net |
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ARABS INCREASE OWN COLLATERAL CASUALTIES; WHO RUNS HAMAS?; ANNAN ON BOMBINGS
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 28, 2006. |
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ISRAEL TO SET UP TERRORIST STATE Road Map Phase I requires the Arabs to eradicate terrorism and terrorist organizations. PM Olmert is drawing up an alternative to his withdrawal plan that abandons 90% of Judea-Samaria to a P.A. state, and enters Phase II of the Road Map without Phase I. Thus the Arab state would have all its terrorist militias in place, ready to resume the war from the vantage of sovereignty. Olmert claims that Israel would retain control over the Jordan Valley. That was the same language that PM Sharon had used about the Philadelpha corridor in Gaza, from which Israel was to prevent smuggling. He gave the corridor up. When the world tells Israel that retaining control over the Valley, which would give Israel a secure border where Joshua fought for the Israelites, is "occupation," he would give it up (IMRA, 6/13). Remember how weak Rabin was towards the Arabs and the US? Netanyahu was worse. Remember how appeasement-minded Netanyahu was? Barak wanted to give everything away. Remember how unrealistic Barak was? Sharon was worse. Remember how foolish Sharon was? Olmert epitomizes folly. ARABS INCREASE THEIR CIVILIAN CASUALTIES Arabs tend to gather around a car of terrorists being attacked by Israeli aircraft. The result is that more bystanders get killed. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights warns them not to. It also condemned Israel for attacking the cars of terrorists (IMRA, 6/13). It ought to demand that the terrorists evacuate from civilian areas, so as not to draw fire down upon the civilians. Terrorist deployment there is a war crime. Attacking terrorists there is not, so long as Israel doesn't blanket the whole neighborhood with artillery shells. SEEKING EQUAL JUSTICE IN ISRAEL Nadia Matar is about to go on trial in that purported democracy known as the State of Israel for "insulting" a public official. Her crime was to liken the official in charge of rousting the Jews out of Gaza similar to the Judenrat, or Jewish ghetto officials who helped Germany roust the Jews from their towns and onto the railroad trains. Matar has sued PM Olmert's daughter, Dana, for calling the Defense Minister a "murderer," after some Arab bathers in Gaza were blown up in a mysterious explosion that the P.A. faked evidence to implicate Israel in. If Israel were responsible, it was an accident. Dana did not wait for an investigation. Her rallying cry was "Long live the Intifada!" Matar's strategy is to show that the law doesn't get applied to seditious leftists, only to patriotic rightists, or to force the Left to drop the law (Prof. Steven Plaut, 6/13). In other words, Dana Olmert does favor murder, but of her own people. Olmert brags that his family influences him. SEC.-GENERAL ON BEACH & CAR BOMBINGS "Q: Mr. Secretary-General, at a time when Pres. Mahmoud Abbas is trying to force the hand of Hamas to accept the referendum, to instill the principle of the Road Map and two States living side by side in peace, Israel is conducting its offensive?" "We do accept that Israel has a right to defend itself and its population, but..." "...how shocked and saddened I am by the latest missile attack by the Israelis... I have always maintained that there has to be proportional use of force, and governments have to be careful not to take action in areas where civilians are remotely likely to be put in harm's way, and that we need to respect humanitarian international law." Sec. Annan phoned PM Olmert to accuse Israel of violating international law. Angry, Olmert asked whether the Arabs' firing of hundreds of rockets honors international law. "Why didn't you phone me after 30 rockets were fired at Israel, and say you wanted it investigated?" Annan replied that he didn't know of the week-long bombardment. (He often gives ignorance of current events as an excuse. Even when informed, he does not act.) "...with regards to the [Qassam] attacks by the Palestinians, I have always condemned it and ask them to stop doing it." "Q: Mr. Secretary, the Israelis have done their own investigation into the first attack on the beach where that girl lost her whole family, and officials are saying that they are concluding that this is a mine that was on the beach... Human rights organizations are saying that this is quite unlikely." "SG: ... an international investigation of any kind, it would require the cooperation of the parties." "SG: I have always said that I stand by... the need to be careful not to resort to extra-judicial assassination of people who do not have a chance to respond to the accusations -- whatever they may be -- because they will no longer be around to answer questions anyway." (IMRA, 6/14.) Annan attributed the blast to Israel, without knowing the facts. He has the mentality of a lynch mob. When he heard that Israel thought that the explosion came from a mine at the beach, he called this "odd." It isn't. Hamas is known to have mined the beach. Another fact he didn't know. There is no requirement for proportional use of force. Belligerents are required to try to minimize civilian casualties. That, Israel does. Why doesn't Annan acknowledge that and admit that the Arab side specializes in maximizing civilian casualties, sometimes as the sole target? International law of war forbids troops from risking civilians needlessly by stationing themselves and fighting from amongst them; it permits the enemy to attack such forces stationed in civilian areas. Annan doesn't understand international law. Yes, Annan asks the P.A. not to commit terrorism. However, the request is mild and without expectation of compliance, for the Arabs never have complied with such requests. Since they are the aggressors, commit terrorism, and endanger civilians by their presence among them, they should be condemned severely and Israel should be encouraged to fight back, not just permitted to fight back and then be rebuked for it. The questioner shows his own bias by referring to Israeli defense, which mostly is a phony attack on open areas, an "offensive" that interferes with Abbas' peace effort. The daily rocket bombardment of Israel is an offensive, and Abbas' praise of the terrorists nullifies his alleged peace effort. Yes, an ideal investigation requires cooperation. This the Arabs won't do. Let Annan remark that if the Arabs don't want to be seen as hiding the facts, they should not sweep away evidence. But can Israel get a fair international investigation? You see the bias at the UNO. During WWII, the US shot down the brilliant admiral commanding the Japanese fleet. It was not an "extra-judicial assassination." Adm. Yamoto had no right to a trial. It was war. The Arabs go in for assassination, themselves. When Israelis are the victims, the terrorists are not condemned. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
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EX MOSSAD HEAD: NO WORTHWHILE REASON FOR FUTURE REALIGNMENT...
Posted by Judy Lash Balint, June 28, 2006. |
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Efraim Halevy, the former head of Israel's fabled Mossad intelligence agency, drives up to a briefing at a Jerusalem think tank in his own grey sedan. No one would guess that the unassuming, British-born gentleman who steps out of the car is the architect of Israel's controversial targeted assassination policy that has eliminated scores of Arab terrorists over the past several years. Halevy, 73, headed up the Mossad between 1998-2002, years when Israel was dealing with Yasser Arafat as head of the Palestinian national movement. But Halevy identifies the current crisis triggered by the tunnel raid into Israel and the abduction of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, 19, as "the fatal moment, the ultimate moment of truth" for Palestinians. For Halevy, the author of a new book entitled Man In The Shadows: Inside the Middle East Crisis (Weidenfeld & Nicholson) the manner in which Hamas leadership deals with the kidnap situation will reveal whether there's a future for real Palestinian governance or if the territories under Palestinian control will descend into further chaos and anarchy, ringing the death knell both for themselves and as future negotiating partners for Israel. "The real question is whether the Palestine national movement has the power to create a structure of command, control and viable governance," Halevy states. "Are they capable of setting up a system of governance"? While Halevy won't predict the outcome, his analysis is that Hamas is now on the horns of a dilemma about the direction they will take. "All timetables have changed," Halevy asserts, noting that the ruling party would now be pushed to go one way or the other because a faction had chosen to instigate the well-planned tunnel incursion into Israeli territory. "We'll see all this unfold in the next 24-48 hours," he predicts. Halevy paints a scenario where Khalad Mashal, the Damascus based head of Hamas' military wing could triumph over the so-called civil wing. There's a "real possibility Mashal will succeed in leading Hamas into a spiral of destruction over this issue," he asserts. If that should occur, the future will be an even greater question mark than ever, Halevy says. But the former intelligence head posits that should the Gaza and Ramallah Hamasniks "get it together and overcome the threat from Damascus, Hamas could become a viable partner for negotiations with Israel." If they resolve the kidnapping, "we'll be in a new ball game," Halevy asserts. At that point, Hamas will have some degree of credibility and if they show that they will adhere to some basic norms of how a responsible government acts, it will be possible to deal with them, Halevy maintains. At the end of the day, Halevy insists, the ball is in the Hamas court. "Hamas has to decide how to resolve the issue of the kidnapped soldier. Israel doesn't have to do anything. If they resolve it, a new situation will arise." As far as Halevy is concerned, there's no place for Israel to support one Hamas faction over another. "We don't have to save Hamas in any way. This is a test of authority for Hamas leaders." Whether Hamas implodes or not, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert continues to push ahead with his "realignment" plan to transfer tens of thousands of Jews from Judea and Samaria. As former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's security advisor, Halevy supported the idea of leaving Gaza, but opposed the unilateral approach that meant "we got nothing, and the Palestinians see the withdrawal as a great victory." Today, Halevy acknowledges that the number of Kassam rocket attacks on Israeli communities has risen since the Gaza pullout and states categorically: "I don't see that any future realignment plan is worthwhile from a security point of view." Judy Lash Balint is an award-winning investigative journalist and author of "Jerusalem Diaries: In Tense Times" (Gefen). It is available for purchase from www.israelbooks.com Visit http://flickr.com/photos/jerusalemdiaries/ for some unusual photos from Israel. |
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THERE'S A WAR GOING ON
Posted by Batya Medad, June 28, 2006. |
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There's a war going on, and this latest "military incursion" is just one of the battles. It doesn't make me happy. I'm not a war-hungry militant. I don't want fighting and war. I want victory a genuine victory. I want the victory we had in our hands in June, 1967, but this time we're not giving the enemy the keys to the Temple Mount![1] Until we have a battle plan to defeat the Arab terrorists who are attempting to destroy us and western civilization, all of these "incursions" are just cosmetics, and they are dangerous. If you want peace, you must destroy[2] the enemy. That's the truth;
that's life.
1. Lambert Dolphin, "Preparations for a Third Jewish Temple"
http://www.templemount.org/tempprep.html
2. Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook, "Palestinian Authority political
leaders advocated kidnapping-for-hostage policy," June 27, 2006,
Batya Medad lives in Shiloh. She can be reached by email at Shilohmuse@yahoo.com or visit her website http://shilohmusings.blogspot.com/ or go to http://www.shilo.org.il |
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TOUGH
Posted by Steven Plaut, June 28, 2006. |
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1. Tough! Quick, take a fast current events quiz: 1. Since the start of the Palestinian "intifada", how many innocent Palestinian civilians have been intentionally murdered by Israel? 2. Since the start of the Palestinian "intifada", how many innocent Israeli civilians have been intentionally murdered by the PLO, the Hamas, and their affiliates? Now if you have been relying on the mainstream media, you will be forgiven for not knowing the correct answers to those two questions. The correct answer to the first question is "zero", and the correct answer to the second question is "All of them!" That's right. Not a single innocent Palestinian has been intentionally killed by Israel during the past two decades of "intifada" violence. But every single one of the hundreds of Jewish civilians killed was an intentional act of Palestinian murder. Sure, plenty of guilty Palestinians have been killed, and these include murderers, leaders in terror organizations, rank and file terrorists, and people setting up rocket launchers to fire at Jewish civilians. And sure, there have also been innocent Palestinian civilians who were killed or injured when the Jews shot back. These are people who were killed in the same Israeli anti-terror operations necessitated by Palestinian terrorist aggression and atrocities. There is a fundamental difference, however, between Palestinian civilians getting killed in anti-terror operations and reprisals by Israel and Israeli civilians, who are killed by Palestinian Islamofascists. The Palestinian dead are unintended collateral damage from operations aimed at stopping rocket attacks and other terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians. True, Israeli anti-terror operations are not so "surgically exact" that only guilty terrorists get killed in them. I am quite sure that if and when such a precise military technology is invented, for killing only guilty terrorists when they hide among innocent civilians, Israel will be the first country on earth to adopt it. However, until then, when Palestinians intentionally target and murder Jewish civilians, innocent Palestinian civilians may suffer the consequences of Arab terror. Jewish civilians are ALWAYS the target of Palestinian terror. Israeli soldiers hurt by the terrorists are generally the unintended collateral damages. Israel suffers from a fundamental strategic problem, which damages its ability to defend itself, namely, the fact that modern Hebrew does not have a linguistic equivalent to the American slang expression "Tough!" True, it has some words for "What a Shame," but they do not quite convey the same meaning. As a result, Israeli politicians generally fail to respond to whines from the world about Palestinian civilians getting hurt in counter-terror operations by saying, "Tough!" There has never been a war in which only soldiers get killed, and there does not exist a weapons technology that allows military strikes to take place in an exact manner where no civilians near military targets ever get hurt. Such surgical precision is all the more impossible when terrorists intentionally hide within and behind civilian populations. International law recognizes the rights of countries at war to attack terrorists and even soldiers when they are hiding among civilians, even when such attacks produce civilian deaths. International law assigns blame for those deaths on the belligerents who use the civilians as their "human shields". As well it should. When German civilians were killed in massive allied bombing of Germany in World War II, when schools with German children were blown to bits, the American command did not send out forensics crews to examine whether the shell or bomb had really come from an American plane or perhaps from something else. The Allied command just said "Tough!". Nazi Germany had started the war, engaged in barbarous aggression and genocide, and Germany -- including its civilians -- would have to bear the consequences. Don't like German children being targeted? Then don't start a world war. Ditto for Japanese civilians killed in World War II. Let us keep in mind that far more innocent Japanese civilians died in the conventional bombing of Tokyo than in the two nuclear explosions. Bombing Tokyo was necessary to end the war. (Actually, so was bombing Hiroshima.) Civilians died as a result? Tough! When Palestinians on a Gaza beach are killed by an Israeli shell (if that is what really happened, and there are reasons to doubt it), then the moral responsibility for those deaths rests squarely on the shoulders of the Palestinian terrorists who necessitate Israeli return fire. These are the same terrorists who have fired thousands of rockets and mortar shells into Israeli civilian areas, even after Israel completely withdrew from the Gaza Strip. These are the murdering Islamofascists who have turned the Negev town of Sderot, well inside Israel's pre-1967 borders, into the Israeli equivalent of Guernica, under daily bombardment. Sderot's low-income civilians live in bunkers, afraid for their lives. Don't want Palestinian civilians killed when Israel shoots back? Simple. Stop the rocket attacks on Sderot. Don't like Israeli reprisals? Simple. Stop the terror atrocities committed by Palestinians against Jews. You want Palestinians to move about freely without being searched at checkpoints? Simple. Stop the campaign of bombings, suicide mass murders, and atrocities by the Palestinians. When the Palestinians stop murdering Jews, no one will have to check their cars. When Palestinian ambulances no longer carry explosives and murderers, no one will stop them for inspection. You want the Palestinians to earn decent wages, have a comfortable life? Simple. Suppress Palestinian terrorism. Stop Palestinian rocket aggression. Then they can even hold day jobs in Israel if they want. They are welcome to shop in Israel and get Israeli medical treatment. No problem! But as long as the terror continues, don't expect Israel to respond by turning the other cheek and abandoning self-defense. Don't like it? TOUGH! When suicide bombers blow up Israeli buses and cafes, military strikes at the perps will continue and Palestinian civilians may well die. Tough! You don't want innocent Palestinian civilians to have to die? Stop the mass atrocities against Jewish children and other living things! Don't like civilians getting hurt in wars? Then don't start wars of terror and aggression against Israel. The Bash-Israel lobby keeps coming up with new forms of political aggression against the Jewish state. The newest goes something like this. Until Israel is technologically capable of killing terrorists hiding in the middle of cities full of civilians without a single Palestinian civilian being injured as "collateral damage", then Israel should be coerced into adopting a policy of Quaker pacifism, under which it does not respond or retaliate at all to terror atrocities. In other words, by demanding that Israel only implement 100% pure military tactics that no other army on earth has ever adopted, the Bash-Israel lobby is in effect really insisting that Israel stop defending its own civilians altogether. Israel should just respond to the firing of thousands of rockets at its civilians by turning the other cheek, becoming the first nation on earth to adopt such pacifism as its military strategy. Israel must be disarmed, while the terrorism must be rewarded. And if Israel dares to shoot back, it becomes the aggressor. By the same logic, Britain and the US were the real aggressors against Germany in 1944. Such disingenuous demands for utopian purity in military operations, even when they come from Israel's own Leftists, are little more than a demand for unconditional Israeli capitulation to terror. Indeed, the only permissible defensive strategy such people are willing to allow Israel to follow is such capitulation. Let us stop with the rhetorical pretenses and affectations! People who are "only" outraged when Palestinian civilians are unintentionally hurt by Israel, but have nothing to say against the mass rocket attacks on Sderot, are naked anti-Semites. They consider Jewish children legitimate targets of Arab aggression and Islamofascist terror because they hate Jews. In reality, they do not care a fig about Palestinian civilian casualties. Such causalities are such delightful propaganda tools that can be exploited to demonize the Jews. There is only one effective way to prevent Palestinian civilian casualties, and that is to stop the Palestinian terrorist aggression against Israel. But that is the one solution to the problem that these modern day pogromchiki, including the academic brownshirts, will never allow to be implemented. 2. June 28, 2006
JERUSALEM -- Dawn broke yesterday over the Israel-Gaza border on a surreal but not unfamiliar scene: Rows of Merkava tanks, armored personnel carriers and Humvees were assembled in preparation for an incursion into the strip. These forces -- when given the green light -- would punch through booby-trapped refugee camps in search of Hamas and Islamic Jihad gunmen, while Israeli jets and helicopters hunt the terrorists from above. By invading Gaza, Israel hopes to counter increasingly bold Palestinian attacks -- such as the firing of some 1,000 Qassam rockets at Israeli border towns and the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier by Hamas earlier this week. The troops will probably net a large number of terrorists and may rescue the captured soldier. But while the operation may flex its military muscle, it cannot restore Israel's deterrence power or prevent future rocket attacks and kidnappings. Indeed, the attack may well prove Pyrrhic -- inflicting greater injury on Israel than on the Palestinians. The quandary Israel confronts today originated in the unilateral withdrawal of all Israeli settlers and soldiers from Gaza last August. A sizable majority of Israelis supported disengagement, excruciating as it was, as a means of achieving a national consensus on the country's borders and of preserving its vital Jewish majority. Yet even those Israelis most in favor of the Gaza pullout understood that many Palestinians would interpret the move as a strategic retreat and a victory for Hamas and al-Aqsa terror. "We shot at the Jews and they fled Gaza," they would say, "so let's keep shooting and they'll abandon Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem." Israel could have refuted that claim by responding immediately and massively to every infiltration and to every rocket fired, irrespective of whether the attacks caused Israeli casualties. Gaza is now a de facto independent state, Israel should have declared, and like any other state it must bear the consequences of its aggression. * * * But Israel did none of this. On the contrary, infiltrations and rocket strikes began almost the day after the Gaza disengagement. The primary target was Sderot, a working-class town in the western Negev populated mostly by long-settled immigrants from North Africa and more recent arrivals from Russia. Israel responded with missile attacks aimed at eliminating the Palestinian rocket crews and destroying the Qassam factories. But the crews were too elusive and the factories too readily rebuilt. The attacks against Sderot and other border towns intensified -- several Qassams struck Askhelon, Israel's major industrial city in the south -- and the Palestinians elected a Hamas government sworn to escalate the violence. Israel retaliated by blasting the Qassam launching areas with artillery fire, but the barrages did little but churn up dirt and accidentally hit civilians. The Jewish state, from a Palestinian perspective, seemed helpless. Israel's impotence was the product of several factors, firstly Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's reluctance to reoccupy Gaza so soon after evacuating it. Then came Mr. Sharon's stroke and the Israeli elections, during which, traditionally, Israel refrains from staging large-scale operations. Finally, Ehud Olmert succeeded in cobbling together a left-of-center coalition that pledged to proceed with the unilateral disengagement from the territories (or, as it is now called, convergence), but largely abandoned Mr. Sharon's hard-hitting antiterror tactics. Though himself a resident of Sderot, Minister of Defense Amir Peretz, a Laborite and advocate of renewed talks with the Palestinians, vowed to exercise maximum restraint and to "count the shells" that the Israel Defense Forces fired into Gaza. Indeed, when Qassams were smashing into Sderot last week and Mr. Peretz's neighbors were on a hunger strike in front of his house, the defense minister was in Jerusalem stumping for his candidates in the Jewish Agency elections. Israel's inaction has provided a bonanza to Hamas. By demonstrating that disengagement impaired rather than enhanced Israeli security, Hamas has dissuaded many Israelis from supporting a similar withdrawal from the West Bank, from where Qassams could be launched at Tel Aviv and the Ben-Gurion airport. By firing the rockets from densely populated neighborhoods, the Palestinians have forced Israel to kill and wound civilian bystanders, sullying its reputation abroad. Indeed, many world leaders and virtually all of the press hastened to condemn Israel for allegedly firing a shell onto a Gaza beach that killed eight Palestinians. That the IDF denied firing the shell and that the Palestinians destroyed exculpatory evidence by gouging shrapnel from the victims' limbs could not repair the damage to Israel's image. Collateral damage not only hurts Israel's international standing, it also divides the country internally. Many Israelis grieve over the deaths of innocent Palestinians, even those incurred in successful strikes against terrorists. Israel's Supreme Court is now considering two lawsuits against the IDF, both filed by Israelis, for the unintentional deaths of 15 civilians while killing Hamas commander Selah Shahada in 2002. The deaths of more than a dozen Palestinian civilians by Israeli fire in the last few weeks has further widened these schisms, pinning the government between the leftists who denounce its callousness and the generals who disdain its sheepishness. An Israeli raid into Gaza will almost certainly result in a frightful number of civilian deaths. The press will once again focus on funerals and mourning families and forget the reason for Israel's action. Israelis will once again agonize over whether these casualties were justified or avoidable. Palestinians will not be the only ones killed. Hundreds of Qassams fell on Sderot but it took the deaths of two soldiers and the kidnapping of a third to move the government to consider major military action. Soldiers are Israel's Everyman -- or rather Everychild -- and Israelis are acutely sensitive to their safety. Yet in retaliating for the rocket attacks and trying to free the hostage, the IDF will almost certainly suffer casualties. After a few days of heated battles and accusations of Israeli atrocities, the government will be compelled to extract its forces from Gaza, but not all the soldiers will be going home. And the rockets will keep raining on Sderot. Posing as defenders of the land, Hamas will be made more, not less, popular by the Israeli attack, and Abu Mazen will be commensurately weakened. Mr. Olmert will be unable to proceed on convergence and the Israeli right will begin its inexorable return to office. There is, however, one way to avert a public relations disaster for Israel, to limit casualties, and to restore Israel's deterrence power: Israel must return to the targeted-killing policy that enabled Mr. Sharon to triumph over terrorist organizations. Israel must target those Palestinians who order others to fire rockets from within civilian areas but whose families are located safely away from the firing zones. No Hamas or Islamic Jihad leader should be immune from such reprisals -- neither Prime Minister Ismail Haniya nor Khaled Meshal, who masterminds Hamas from Damascus. Though there is certain to be some international backlash, the damage to Israel's image will likely be temporary. Who today remembers Abdel Aziz Ranitisi and Sheikh Yassin? Those responsible for causing injury and death to both Israelis and Palestinians must pay the ultimate price. Only then can quiet be restored to Israel's borders and progress toward either unilateral or negotiated solutions resumed. Mr. Oren, senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, is author of "Six Days of War" (Oxford, 2002). URL for this article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115146041260192673.html Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist,
a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author
of "The Scout." He frequently comments -- both seriously and
satirically -- on Israeli politics and the left wing academic
community. His website address is
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WE LOST 29 WONDERFUL BOYS IN OPERATION DEFENSIVE SHIELD
Posted by Evelyn Hayes, June 28, 2006. |
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We lost 29 wonderful boys as bomb targets in Operation Defensive Shield implicating the collaboration of Saddam Hussein and Arafat al Husseini/Mahmoud Abbas in suicide murder. Kadima then invited another killing field by evicting Jews from productive peaceful Gush Katif employing Bedouins and others, sending fruits, vegetables and flowers across the globe. As Kadima watched the killing field bomb Sderot extensively and shushed the attacks on Ashkelon, and knew of more tunnels it was too busy brutalizing its settled Jews on Jewish owned land in Biblical Israel. Warn all inhabitants of War zone Gaza of temporary eviction and Bomb sweep by air not with our kids. The 150,000 who rushed the gates opened by Condoleezza Rice and Kadima can be evicted by all in Gaza terrorist holdouts and sent to a safe haven in walled section of Sinai and then massive bombing of the remaining terrorist infrastructure and weapons plants. Shutting off electric and water will try out the terrorists or send them escaping through their tunnels. Where are the dogs who would be barking out the tunnels. True peaceful residents can return after Gaza is cleared and all mercenarry murdering Hizballah, Alqaida, Hamas, Fatah are sent to an Alkatraz to stop global jihad rallying by killing Jews. Stop Jihad now before it is all explosive Contact Evelyn Hayes at haze@rcn.com |
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THE SMELL OF SUCCESS, A TOUCH OF DETERRENCE
Posted by Professor Eugene Narrett, June 28, 2006. |
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One knows that the IDF, Israel and the Jewish people are poised for a long-needed and life-saving success when Arab MK's began burbling threats about ending the move into that geographic anomaly and geopolitical imposture, the Gaza strip. The smell of success also is blowin' in the wind when jihadists begin making threats about what they 'will do' if Israel gives them the pounding they have earned and that they can feel hovering in the air above their murderous heads. This babbling of the enemy is a sure sign that Israel, astonishingly (and look at what it's taken the past 13 years) is on the verge of making a major bite out of global jihad and in restoring deterrence, -- the awareness by everyone that Jewish life is precious, not cheap and that, cousin to this fact, that Jewish land everywhere west of the Jordan is going to be redeemed and soon. Israel must not miss this opportunity to bring light out of darkness, good from evil and to step away from the precipice its ruling echelons have brought it to (albeit with much great power pressure). The hail of rockets from the Gaza strip have been a kind of measure for measure revealing the suicidal stupidity and sin of removing the Jewish settlers from their beautiful communities there. The continuing and increasing attacks, and the escalating threats of the Islamic groups of more to come are facts demanding that retributive justice be exacted now. Trust us: nearly all Americans, including the malicious peddlers of bad faith in the State Department will breathe a lot easier. But that is not the main concern or benefit... At a minimum, the IDF remains in the entire southern 'bulge' of Gush Katif, isolating the terrorists from the sieve-like Egyptian border and re-establishing a permanent Jewish presence there, for life and living. In addition, all leaders of all terrorist groups that may be involved in any way with the rocket attacks or with the recent infiltration, murders of soldiers on guard duty (this isn't a war, is it? and if it is...), and the heinous kidnapping and threats to murder Israeli POW Shalit must be executed forthwith by any means. And if, heaven forbid, POW Shalit is not released promptly or if he is harmed further in any way at all then every leader and spokesman for any terror group anywhere from the Sinai to and throughout Syria and Lebanon, Yehuda and the Shomron are to be executed and the cities from which they operate flattened flatter than the towns of Gush Katif were flattened; flattened just like the cities from which the nazi murderers operated. This is the path to peace; this is the preemption of more terror attacks against Jews. This is deterrence against the continuing attrition and genocide of the Jewish people. It's about time that Israel, the main target for many centuries, led the world in bringing a big dose of retributive justice and deterrence to global jihad. That's a peace process that will succeed; the partner will be created in proportion to the massiveness of the deterrent strike. Professor Eugene Narrett's new book, Israel and The Endtimes is now
available at this web site:
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TAQQIYAH -- OR, WHAT'S IMPLICIT ABOUT IMPLICIT
Posted by Gerald A. Honigman, June 28, 2006. |
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So, did you hear the "good news"? With Israel poised to invade Gaza to strike out against those who have deliberately launched dozens of rockets and mortars against civilians in Israel proper since the latter withdrew from Gaza, Hamas and Abbas's Arafatians have come to an agreement. The good cop/bad cop halves of the same Arab coin now allegedly will call for a halt to attacks against Jews within Israel's 1949, U.N.-imposed, 9-mile wide armistice line existence if the Jews agree to give away the store. The media is reporting the story as an implicit recognition of the Jewish State. And the Arabs are laughing their butts off. For many Muslims, obfuscation--deliberate deceit--is kosher as long as it's done to promote the cause. It has a name, taqiyyah, and it is especially proper in times of a threat. For both Hamas and Abbas' Fatah, that cause--whether framed in Dar ul-Islam vs. Dar al-Harb religious or political language--has no room for a Jewish Israel -- regardless of size. There is no difference between the charters of the P.L.O. or Hamas when it comes to this subject--despite lies to the contrary. And those lies are another example of taqiyyah -- in this case telling the West what it wants to hear as opposed to reality. With Israeli tanks on their doorstep in the wake of the kidnapping of a young soldier stationed at his base in Israel proper (with subsequent news of another possible kidnapping as well) and the killing and wounding of others, it's show time once again... Tell an all-too-gullible West what it wants to hear -- even if you're not telling them that at all. So, if Israel agrees to a total retreat to its former microscopic, rump state status, and accepts being inundated by millions of alleged Arab refugees sworn to its destruction, then the good cop/bad cop team might agree to another of their so-called hudnas -- temporary ceasefires. As many have noted, Arafat's vision of this was the Peace of the Quraysh. The Muslim Prophet, Muhammad, made a temporary truce with this pagan tribe until he gained the strength to defeat them. The late Egyptian ghoul's vision is identical to that of the current good cop/bad cop team. It gets tiring having to repeat all of this stuff. But the media and others--including the U.S. State Department--act in ways that makes this repetition necessary. The most moderate of so-called Palestinian Arab moderates, the late Faisal al-Husseini, called any dealings with the Jews merely a Trojan Horse. Taqqiyah... And he explained that the real plan was for an Arab Palestine from the River to the Sea. Check out both the Arafatians' and Hamas' websites, maps, literature, and so forth if you have any doubts about the alleged new Arab plan as well. After the Six Day War in 1967, Arabs were forced to abandon the one fell swoop idea for Israel's demise for a destruction in stages strategy instead. The old/new plan now making "news" calls to first get Israel back to its indefensible, '49 Auschwitz/armistice lines, and then--as Muhammad did with the Quraysh---finish it off at the proper time. Recall that Mahmoud Abbas, the current sweet-talking, Arafatian alleged good cop, also ran for office based upon policies calling for Israel's destruction as a Jewish State. He has been simply more willing than Hamas to play the taqiyyah card. With Israel apparently ready to blast some more of Hamas's leaders to their awaiting seventy or so virgins in Islamic Paradise, it appears that taqqiyah is sounding a bit better to them as well right now. Hence the media's reporting of this alleged new joint implicit acceptance of Israel's right to exist by the Arab good cop/bad cop team. For such a "deal," Israel is expected to bare the necks of its kids. What's really nauseating is that all of this is well known and is well-documented. So why is it newsworthy when Arabs indulge in such taqiyyah--to save their own derrieres--yet again? Most nations wouldn't have waited months to take effective action against neighbors bombarding them on a daily basis. America certainly wouldn't have. And none should. Imagine trying to locate the exact car of the exact bomber amid a crowded civilian population. But what's Israel's alternative here -- to simply allow the rats to escape back into their dens unchallenged? And recall that, in Israel's particular case, the Palestinian Arab population voted into office a government openly dedicated to its destruction. So the Arab Street is a willing accomplice to the blood lust, rejectionist policies of its leaders...Not exactly an innocent group. While many in the media and elsewhere claim that there's moral equivalency at work here, murdered Jews are not killed because their brothers use them as human shields and are caught in the crossfire and such. They are innocents deliberately targeted and blown apart simply because they are Jews living in the sole, resurrected Jewish State. Keep in mind that Arabs have almost two dozen of such states (including one, Jordan, which exists on some 80% of the original 1920 borders of Palestine), most having been conquered and forcibly Arabized from native, non-Arab peoples. Consider what the Geneva Conventions has to say about this? Article #51/7: The presence of the civilian population shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from attack. Think about what Israel has been putting up with from its neighbors. Article #58b: The parties to the conflict shall...avoid locating military objectives within or near densely populated areas. The rats' dens are typically set up in or adjacent to civilian apartment buildings, hospitals, schools, etc., as America has learned for itself in Iraq. Article #51/2: The civilian population...shall not be the object of attack. Acts of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited...Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited. Arabs typically target Israeli civilians. In light of all of the above, there is only one course of action for Israel to take in response to the old, new destruction in phases peace of the grave plan which the media and others claim to be the Arabs' implicit recognition. It must treat it the way any other taqqiyah should be dealt with. Gerald A. Honigman, a Florida educator, has created and conducted counter-Arab propaganda programs for college youth, has lectured on numerous campuses and other platforms, and has publicly debated Arab spokesmen. His articles and op-eds have been published in both the print media and on websites. Contact him at honigman6@msn.com or go to his website: http://geraldahonigman.com/blog.php |
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ERLANGER'S REVIEW OF LEVITT'S BOOK SPEAKS VOLUMES -- ABOUT ERLANGER
Posted by Deb Kotz, June 27, 2006. |
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This is yet another instance of bias in Mideast coverage by a major newspaper reporter. Last week at a board meeting for Sarah Stern's new think tank, Emet, I had the pleasure of meeting a former UPI reporter who said he encountered the bias firsthand while reporting on events in Jenin. UPI initially refused to publish his piece on the lack of evidence for a massacre at Jenin because they said it wasn't even-handed. He was basing his story on IDF statements and not balancing it with the Palestinian viewpoint. The fact that there wasn't a massacre didn't make a difference. It was the covering of both viewpoints (as if the event were somehow subjective) that the editors insisted upon. It wasn't until another reported wrote a piece from the Palestinian standpoint that UPI put out both pieces together for "balanced coverage". On another note, this new book, Hamas: Politics, Charity and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad, by Matt Levitt (Kemp Mill's very own whose son is an excellent t-ball player) looks quite interesting and informative. The negative NY Times review makes me want to buy it more. Check it out on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300110537/sr=8-1/ qid=1151430773/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-0779505-4813736?ie=UTF8 This review of Erlanger's review was written by Dr. Barry Rubin, Director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center. It appeared yesterday in the Jerusalem Post. |
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In a shocking anti-Israel diatribe, the New York Times correspondent in Jerusalem has revealed both his profound personal bias and basic acceptance of Hamas's political claims. These revelations came in a review by Steven Erlanger in the International Herald Tribune of June 23 (reprinted from the Times) of Hamas. Politics, Charity and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad by Matthew Levitt, currently a deputy assistant secretary of the US Treasury department. Erlanger spends little time covering the actual contents of the book, but instead launches an attack on the book's premises, sources and on Israeli policy. The most important aspect of the review is Erlanger's complaint that Levitt "does not discuss (and never even seems to entertain) the premise that Palestinians have a right to resist a 40- year Israeli occupation and partial annexation of their land." He says that Hamas is popular because of the existence of Jewish settlements, the separation barrier, restrictions on Palestinian movements and "the failure by Israelis to support those in Fatah committed to nonviolence, like President Mahmoud Abbas..." CLEARLY, ERLANGER views the conflict from a radical Palestinian standpoint, probably without consciously understanding why his statement demonstrates this fact. Hamas itself and its main supporters do not hold their views because of anger at Israel's presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip - now greatly diminished, though Erlanger appears unaware of this - but due to a desire to wipe Israel off the map. Apparently, though, Erlanger views anti-Israel extremism - the factor that is maintaining all the issues he mentions - as merely a reaction to Israeli policies. Yet, to cite only two examples, both Hamas and Fatah rejected both peace with a Palestinian state in 2000 and Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip because they saw such developments as undermining their drive to keep the conflict going until they can attain total victory. Equally absurd is Erlanger's blaming Palestinian extremism on an Israeli failure to help Abbas. Leaving aside past Israeli funding of that leader's budget, military restraint, the turning over to him of the Gaza Strip and the recent giving of guns to his forces, it ignores Abbas's unwillingness to do anything moderate. Abbas is hardly committed to nonviolence. To cite only one example, his recent endorsement of the "prisoners' letter" explicitly endorses violence against Israelis. Hamas's success is certainly related to Fatah's incompetence and corruption as well as the nationalist group's refusal to offer an alternative, moderate program, but that is hardly Israel 's fault. WHILE ERLANGER would no doubt condemn terrorism, it is also shocking that he does not see that terrorism is not exactly covered by a right to resist occupation. The way he expresses all these issues is the same way that Hamas and Fatah propaganda explain them. And yet Erlanger is accurately explaining the thinking that lies behind most of the Times coverage, the view that Israeli is responsible for the conflict, Abbas is a moderate victim and Hamas is an understandable reaction to Israeli misdeeds. It should be remembered that Osama bin Laden and the terrorists in Iraq also justify their deeds, including September 11, as falling under a right to resist occupation. ON TWO other points, Erlanger makes interesting observations. First, he is obsessed with Levitt's use of sources, complaining that the author employs material from a research center associated with Israel's government and has worked at a think tank - the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center of the Center for Special Studies - "considered friendly to Israel." Thus, he concludes, "There will be readers of this book who will see it as fronting for the Israeli intelligence establishment and its views." Of course, Erlanger is signaling people that they should reach this conclusion. This kind of writing is inappropriate because the research center in question is almost exclusively merely translating Palestinian documents and texts. At any rate, the proper course for Erlanger would have been to point out some error or questionable interpretation by Levitt based on his use of this material. Instead, we have guilt by association. I think that what Erlanger is really doing here is revealing his own fear of being branded pro-Israel if he pays too much attention - or at times merely reports - Israel 's side of the story. There is a constant tendency to take Palestinian sources at face value but to energetically challenge Israeli sources, which have proven far more reliable. Finally, Erlanger is insistent on a very curious argument. He spends a lot of the review criticizing Levitt for not agreeing that the most important aspect of Hamas is trying to Islamicize Palestinian society rather than fighting against Israel. Ironically, this contradicts his claim that Hamas and its supporters are motivated by Israeli actions. But obviously both fighting Israel and Islamicizing Palestinian society are goals of Hamas. Indeed, Hamas believes that continuing to fight Israel, ignoring Israeli concessions and ensuring that peace fails is the best way to build support for an Islamist revolution among Palestinians. Why, then, is Erlanger obsessed with this distinction? I suggest that what Erlanger is actually saying is that what is really bad about Hamas is not that it is a racist, terrorist group with genocidal intentions against Israelis but that it is an Islamist organization. If, after all, Hamas is exercising a just right of resistance motivated by Israeli misdeeds, how can it be condemned on those grounds? The trouble with Hamas is that it is a "right-wing" religious group rather than a "left-wing" nationalist one. The bottom line of all these points is that after reading Erlanger's review it is impossible to take seriously the idea that he is a fair reporter or has a good understanding of the contemporary issues he is covering. Deb Kotz is an active member of the Brandeis Chapter of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) and maintains an email list to distribute articles of interest to the local community. She can be reached at DebKotz@aol.com |
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ERLANGER IS WRONG AGAIN. PALESTINIAN ARABS HAVE NO RIGHT TO RESORT
TO VIOLENCE
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 27, 2006. |
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Steven Erlanger is the Jerusalem bureau chief of the New York Times. His review of Matthew Levitt's "Hamas" (Militant Zeal: a Sunday New York Times Book Review) makes two rather unexpected errors which will mislead readers unless corrected: 1.) "....Hamas's essential goal remains the creation of an Islamic society in Palestine. The war against Israel is actually secondary". This is not correct. The "Palestine" that Hamas seeks to Islamize, per their own oft-ballyhooed pronouncements, is "Palestine from the River to the Sea" -- all of what is today Israel. Therefore, the war against Israel is indeed primary. Israel must first and foremost be destroyed, and its Jews annihilated or exiled. Then the Islamization of that "Greater Palestine" can be accomplished. All Mr. Erlanger needed to do was to read the Hamas Covenant. Their goals, primary and secondary, are perfectly clear. 2.) "Most damaging of all, Levitt does not discuss (and never even seems to entertain) the premise that Palestinians have a right to resist a 40-year Israeli occupation and partial annexation of their land." This is not correct. Actually the Palestinians. leaders and rank-and-file, have absolutely no right whatsover to offer military or terrorist resistance to Israel. It is against international law to utilize war or terrorism or violence or mass murder to resolve a problem when peaceful means of resolution are available. Israel, the UK, the USA, the UN, or some combination of these have offered statehood and peaceful political self-determination to the Palestinian leadership at least 15 times since 1937 (the Peel commission). Every time, the offers were rejected with violence, murder, terrorism, war, and the endless relentless declaration that the Arabs would destroy Israel and genocide its Jews. Palestinian leadership has made clear, many, many times, that their goal is not a state alongside of Israel, but a state instead of Israel, on the corpses of Israel's 6,000,000 Jews. What is euphemistically and mendaciously called the "resistance" (which Erlanger somehow thinks is the Palestinan's right) is actually the continuation of the terror war begun by the Hajj Amin el-Husseini (ally to Hitler) in 1929, and continued sporadically, punctuated by full-scale wars, to this day. If the Palestinian leadership wanted their state on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, they could have had it decades ago. They have chosen instead to achieve their real goal with violence and war and terrorism. There is no moral, historical, or legal justification for their endless jihad against Israel. It seems that Erlanger is ignorant of international law and the history of the Israel-Arab conflict. He should do a bit of research before he errs in such a misleading manner. Will you be kind enough to print a correction? David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com |
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FEAR OF ANOTHER KIDNAPPING
Posted by Hillel Fendel, June 27, 2006. |
Eliyahu, son of Miriam and Yitro Asheri, is a student at the pre-military yeshiva academy in N'vei Tzuf, in the western Binyamin area. He was last seen Sunday when he left a friend's home in Beitar Illit on his way north. He was to have joined his yeshiva colleagues on a trip to the Golan Heights, but the head of the academy called this morning to say that Eliyahu never arrived. Volunteers are on their way to Beitar Illit, south of Jerusalem and west of Gush Etzion, to see if they can find a trace of the missing youth. A friend of Eliyahu informed the police early Monday afternoon that he had seen him Sunday evening at the French Hill junction in northern Jerusalem, where hundreds of people wait for rides northward every day. The Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) terrorist group announced late last night that it had kidnapped a "settler." Arutz-7 has learned that an emergency room has been established in Itamar. Though his father told the police that his son has "gone off by himself" in the past, the security establishment is essentially convinced that the youth was kidnapped. A spokesman for the PRC confirmed to Ynet this afternoon that a settler had been kidnapped, but said he would not "give out information for free." Hamas spokesmen threatened even more kidnappings, until all Arab prisoners in Israeli prisons are released. MK Yuval Shteinitz (Likud) told Arutz-7 that in his opinion, it is easier to find a kidnapped Israeli in Judea and Samaria than in Gaza. Asked what he feels should be Israel's strategy today, the Chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in the previous Knesset said, "Beyond the problem of Kassams and a kidnapped soldier, a Palestinian Hizbullah is being formed under our noses in Gaza, with tens of thousands of young Arabs training to fight against us - and yet Israel does nothing about it." Shteinitz said that in the short range, Israel must close down Gazan infrastructures, as well as target Hamas leaders. "Ultimately," he said, "there will be no choice but to go into Gaza, as I have long proposed, and carry out another massive offensive like Operation Defensive Shield."
Hillel Fendel is senior news editor at Arutz Sheva (www.IsraelNN.com).
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SURVEY OF WORLD'S MUSLIMS YIELDS DISMAYING RESULTS
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 27, 2006. |
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This article by Daniel Pipes in the NY Sun
The Pew polls are highly respected, and seem to be done in a scientific manner. Therefore, their results are worthy of our attention. Unfortunately, the results described below are congruent with the experiences of myself and some members of my congregation (Kol Emeth) who met last week with Moslem journalists, editors, and News TV producers and anchors from Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. This was in the context of a world-tour of the East-West Center and Senior Journalists 2006 Senior Journalists Seminar. While our meeting was far more than just cordial, and our interaction with the Moslem journalists was pleasasnt, productive and informative, some of us Jews were deeply disturbed by some of the journalists' questions, asked with disarming innocence and ingenue, such as: 1.) Is it true that 4000 Jews stayed home from work in their offices at the twin towers on 9/11/01? (i.e., the Jews did 9/11, didn't they?) 2.) What about the Jewish lobby. Does it really run the USA? (i.e., the Jewish Lobby runs the USA, doesn't it?) 3.) what about all those thousands of Moslems killed in Sabra and Shatila by the Israelis? (i.e., Moslems hate Israel because Israelis slaughter Moslems -- oops, no one told them that it was actually Lebanese Christian Arab Phalangists who slaughtered about 600 [not thousands] Moslem Palestinian civilians in those two refugee camps, NOT Israelis. Thus while one may argue that Israel bears partial culpability, it was Christian Arabs, not Jewish Israelis, who did the killing). 4.) How do you (Jews) deal with the fact that Israel stole Moslem land and drove hundreds of thousands of Moslems into exile? (i.e., the Arab revisionist propaganda narrative is the truth and the Israeli historical account is discounted as irrelevant or false, or is not even known). 5.) Why is everyone so focused on Moslem terrorism? What about the IRA and FARC and the Basques? (i.e., the fact that almost all of today's terrorists are Moslems has not registered with these media leaders and opinion-makers, and they seek excuses to minimize Moslem terrorism rather than confront it). Recall that the questioners are journalistic leaders in their countries. They are news editors, TV anchors, senior reporters, etc. They are the opinion-makers in their Moslem countries. They are highly educated professionals and are in professional positions where they are expected to know, and have access to the sources to learn, about the realities of the Israel-Arab conflict and the broader conflict of Western civilization against Islamofascist terrorism. They all spoke fluent English. Therefore, the naivetee of their questions, asked honestly with no sense of hesitance or untowardness, is deeply disturbing. Their questions bespoke the credibility that these senior journalist leaders gave to the Arab propaganda lies. It was, of course, excellent that we had the opportunity to explain to them why these assertions are false, what was the evidence that exposed the falsehoods, and what where the alternatives that had much evidence supporting them. [[[ in a nutshell..... 1.) if you want to cover your tracks, blame the Jews. The Saudis started the lie that 4000 Jews did not show up for work at the world trade center that day. 2.) if you have tremendous influence on Washington and you want to keep attention off of your influence, blame the Jews. Arab source and pro-Palestinian spokespersons emphasize the lie of the Jewish lobby. 3.) Christian Arabs slaughter Moslem Arabs because of the attrocities perpetrted against the Christians by the Moslems.....and both sides, plus much of the rest of the world, are happy to blame the Jews. 4.) I summarized in a brief very long one sentence the mountains of data and evidence that prove that Jews bought land, NOT stole land, and Jews developed land, and Jews created the economy and agrarian infrastructure that permitted the tripling or quadrupling of Arab populations in pre-state Israel between 1855 and 1947. Far from stealing land and driving Arabs off, Zionism created arable land from desert and swamp and brought a million arabs in. 5.) while not all Moslems are terrorists, almost all terrorists today are Moslems. A Saudi Moslem journalist made that tragic observation more than a year ago. ....]]] It was also most gratifying to see that this group accepted our explanations without objections (although that could just be politesse on their part -- no sense getting in to an irreconciliable argument, so let our hosts say what they will). But the bottom line impression that I got from this meeting is congruent with the statistics in Pipes' article. Most Moslems, in most of the world, including the very polite and cordial and peace-loving and highly educated westernized Moslems who have access to non-Moslem media, are quite willing to believe the most anti-Semitic canards promoted by Arab propaganda (funded in large part by the Saudi royal family) and by Moslem anti-Israel governments.....and to believe them without any serious critique or examination. It is more than likely that their personal beliefs make their way into their professional news activities, and thus exacerbate the problem by having their media project those beliefs onto their audiences in the Moslem world. Since these journalistic and media leaders believe the lies, then it is no wonder that Moslem rank-and-file, by the hundreds of millions, believe Osama's lies and Nusrallah's lies. Peace begins with trust. And trust begins with truth. Truth is in deep crisis due to the psychosis of denial in the Moslem world, and that may explain why peace is so problematic in the Middle East. David ML |
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How do Muslims worldwide think? To find out, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press carried out a large-scale attitudinal survey this spring. Titled "The Great Divide: How Westerners and Muslims View Each Other," it interviewed Muslims in two batches of countries: six of them with long-standing, majority-Muslim populations (Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Turkey) and four of them in Western Europe with new, minority Muslim populations (France, Germany, Britain, and Spain). The survey, which also looks at Western views of Muslims, yielded some dismaying but not altogether surprising results. Its themes can be grouped under three rubrics. A proclivity to conspiracy theories: In not one Muslim population polled does a majority believe that Arabs carried out the attacks of September 11, 2001, on America. The proportions range from a mere 15% in Pakistan holding Arabs responsible, to 48% among French Muslims. Confirming recent negative trends in Turkey, the number of Turks who point the finger at Arabs has declined to 16% today from 46% in 2002. In other words, in every one of these 10 Muslim communities, a majority views September 11 as a hoax perpetrated by the American government, Israel, or some other agency. Likewise, Muslims are widely prejudiced against Jews, ranging from 28% unfavorable ratings among French Muslims to 98% in Jordan (which, despite the monarchy's moderation, has a majority Palestinian Arab population). Further, Muslims in certain countries (especially Egypt and Jordan) see Jews conspiratorially, as being responsible for bad relations between Muslims and Westerners. Conspiracy theories also pertain to larger topics. Asked, "What is most responsible for Muslim nations' lack of prosperity?" between 14% (in Pakistan) and 43% (in Jordan) blame the policies of America and other Western states, as opposed to indigenous problems, such as a lack of democracy or education, or the presence of corruption or radical Islam. This conspiracism points to a widespread unwillingness in the umma to deal with realities, preferring the safer bromides of plots, schemes, and intrigues. It also exposes major problems adjusting to modernity. Support for terrorism: All the Muslim populations polled display a solid majority of support for Osama bin Laden. Asked whether they have confidence in him, Muslims replied positively, ranging between 8% (in Turkey) and 72% (in Nigeria). Likewise, suicide bombing is popular. Muslims who call it justified range from 13% (in Germany) to 69% (in Nigeria). These appalling numbers suggest that terrorism by Muslims has deep roots and will remain a danger for years to come. British and Nigerian Muslims are most alienated: Britain stands out as a paradoxical country. Non-Muslims there have strikingly more favorable views of Islam and Muslims than elsewhere in the West; for example, only 32% of the British sample view Muslims as violent, significantly less than their counterparts in France (41%), Germany (52%), or Spain (60%). In the Muhammad cartoon dispute, Britons showed more sympathy for the Muslim outlook than did other Europeans. More broadly, Britons blame Muslims less for the poor state of Western-Muslim relations. But British Muslims return the favor with the most malign anti-Western attitudes found in Europe. Many more of them regard Westerners as violent, greedy, immoral, and arrogant than do their counterparts in France, Germany, and Spain. In addition, whether asked about their attitudes toward Jews, responsibility for September 11, or the place of women in Western societies, their views are notably more extreme. The situation in Britain reflects the "Londonistan" phenomenon, whereby Britons preemptively cringe and Muslims respond to this weakness with aggression. Nigerian Muslims generally have the most belligerent views on such issues as the state of Western-Muslim relations, the supposed immorality and arrogance of Westerners, and support for Mr. bin Laden and suicide terrorism. This extremism results, no doubt, from the violent state of Christian-Muslim relations in Nigeria. Ironically, most Muslim alienation is found in those countries where Muslims are either the most or the least accommodated, suggesting that a middle path is best - where Muslims do not win special privileges, as in Britain, nor are they in an advanced state of hostility, as in Nigeria. Overall, the Pew survey sends an undeniable message of crisis from one end to the other of the Muslim world. David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com |
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SUPERMAN JEWISH?
Posted by Steven Plaut, June 27, 2006. |
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This was published in the New York Post June 19, 2006. It is called "Lighter side -- Mensch in Tights". |
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Superman is the ultimate American icon - tall, built, brave. And hot. But now, as Superman is set to fly onto the big screen next week, bringing truth, justice and rippling muscles to a new generation of moviegoers, there comes word that the Man of Steel has a secret. The man behind the red cape is a Yeshiva boy. Superman - Jewish? "Only a Jew would think of a name like Clark Kent," says Brooklyn Rabbi Simcha Weinstein. "He's the bumbling, nebbish, Jewish stereotype. He's Woody Allen. Can't get the girl. Can't get the job - at the same time, he has this tremendous heritage he can't express." Weinstein has just published Up, Up, and Oy Vey! (Leviathan Press), a work that concludes, with scholarly authority and voluminous footnotes, that beneath Supe's form-fitting tights, there lurks a circumcision. In the book, and on his Web site, www.rabbisimcha.com, he outs the Jewish roots of other superheroes who conceal their true identities - an undoubtedly Jewish trait - such as Batman, the Hulk and Spider-Man. Weinstein grew up in England as Simon, a boy who worshipped the pop-culture gods of Indiana Jones and James Bond. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist,
a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author
of "The Scout." He frequently comments -- both seriously and
satirically -- on Israeli politics and the left wing academic
community. His website address is
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PIPES TO ISRAEL: WAKE UP!; WHICH ARMY IS THE MOST MORAL?; ISM FOR TERRORISM
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 27, 2006. |
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ISRAEL BARRAGED The Arabs have increased their rocket bombardment of Israeli towns to more than a dozen a day (as per IMRA, 6/11). The Secretary-General asked for a UNO investigation of the explosion that killed Arab bathers in Gaza (IMRA, 6/10). He did not ask for a UNO investigation of the daily barrage of Israeli towns by rockets from the P.A.. What does that tell you about the UNO? When there were a couple a day, the IDF said it would not tolerate them, but it tolerated them. IDF announcements about taking tough action, made almost daily, are ignored by the Arabs. The residents of the struck communities know this. They are protesting. Do Israelis as a whole know that their government does not provide security? PM OLMERT'S CONDITIONS FOR RETREAT "...we need to separate from the Palestinians into boundaries that can be defensible. Now, whether technically it will be called permanent or not permanent, if these boundaries will be satisfactory if they will be protected by the fence, if the international community will recognize Israel's right to have such boundaries,..." IMRA comments: "In the elections PM Olmert said he wanted to retreat to permanent borders. Now he wants to retreat to a temporary line if part of the world temporarily 'recognizes' the temporary line. Olmert isn't claiming that his proposed retreat would put a stop to the ongoing 'slicing' of the Israeli 'salami'. He also isn't clear what constitutes 'recognition'. Does this mean that products manufactured within the 'recognized' lines but beyond the 'Green Line' would qualify as 'Made in Israel' for customs clearing in Europe...' (IMRA, 6/10.) As Israel retreats from its diplomatic and territorial positions, it also retreats from the rationale for retreat. Olmert doesn't define "defensible." Without most of Yesha, the borders are indefensible. EGYPT VS. P.A. Egypt says it has evidence that Hamas trained the terrorists who set off bombs in the Sinai, and demands an accounting from the Hamas regime in the P.A. (IMRA, 6/11). Egypt has opposed Israeli and P.A. disarming of Hamas. Egypt: vipers make poor pets. DANIEL PIPES TELLS THE ISRAELIS TO WAKE UP Unlike awardees who come to express love for Israel, Daniel Pipes came to criticize Israeli timidity towards the Arabs. The Israeli ruling class does not understand the Arab viewpoint. The Arabs want to destroy Israel. Israel needs to win, but it thinks it cannot win, it must try to manage the conflict. This conflict is pressed from the Arab ground up, rather than being a diversion by the leaders to shield them from popular discontent. The Arabs have milked the false notion of "occupation," so that even as Israel withdraws, the Arabs claim they still are being occupied and Israel owes them a living. P.A. anarchy began before withdrawal, and in the long run, may hurt Israel (Pipes #679, 6/11). Pipes may not express devotion to Israel because he doesn't have any. He just opposes jihad. INVITE TERRORISTS, BAR DEFENSE MINISTER Tel Aviv University once hosted PLO founding member and apologist for terrorism, Feisal Husseini, as a speaker. Leftist professors told protestors that they should not interfere with his "freedom of speech." Tel Aviv U. invited ex-Defense Minister Mofaz to speak. Thirty leftist professors protested against the invitation, arguing that he is identified with Israeli war practices, which they suggest are criminal. One protestor against letting Mofaz speak had insisted on letting Husseini speak regardless of his actions. The Left is hypocritical as well as anti-Israel (Prof. Steven Plaut, 6/11). It is never appropriate, except by proponents of jihad, to invite a terrorist to speak at a college. Terrorists are war criminals. Against terrorism, Israel has a right to defend itself. It does not commit war crimes. The Left, impelled by self-hatred, accepts false accusations by Israel's enemies. POLLS CAN BE DEADLY Polls governed Pres. Clinton's foreign policy. To maintain popularity, Clinton backed off from confrontation with Somalia, let Saddam alone, let Iran develop nuclear weapons technology, and let the EU finance P.A. terrorism. He left these problems to Bush. (Now, Democrats blame Bush for these problems and his attempts to solve them.) Pres. Bush said he would stay the course of bringing the war to the terrorists, but he now is letting Iran develop nuclear weapons technology. He is worried by polls showing him having lost popularity (MEF News, 6/11). Campaign contributions to Clinton gave China access to US rocket secrets. Clinton's policies led to many deaths. P.A. terrorists killed hundreds of Israelis. Islamists seem about to take over Somalia. Now Bush may regain a little popularity, until Iran destroys one of our cities. WHICH ARMY IS THE MOST MORAL PM Olmert boasts, "The IDF is the most moral military in the world." It avoids inflicting civilian casualties. When by chance some occur, the country strives to correct the error (Benny Avni, NY Sun, 6/12, p.5). I think that the US military has a high ethical standing, and that Israel has a low ethical standing. The IDF avoids inflicting civilian casualties, but the terrorists exploit this chivalry (or is it obsequiousness) to kill more Israelis. It fails the basic mission of an army. Worse, it attacks its own people. It is getting worse, whereas the US is improving. CIVIL VIOLENCE IN P.A. Hamas felt somewhat strengthened by the beach bathers' deaths "apparently by an errant Israeli shell." It became emboldened to attack a P.A. police building. Fatah retaliated by attacking the parliament building dominated by Hamas (Steven Erlanger, NY Times, 6/13, A1.) The P.A. film of the beach casualties incorporated clips of an Israeli ship firing at the coast, amid P.A. sirens sounding, and sailors observing the results, before and after beach havoc scenes. The filming fabricated an impression that the ship was firing at the beach, but it showed a crater unlike that which an Israeli shell would make, and all Israeli firing was at a different time. P.A. doctors had removed shrapnel from the beach-explosion patients whom they turned over to Israeli hospitals. Israeli doctors found a bit more shrapnel. It was not the same type of metal as used by Israeli shells. The Arabs have mines and explosives all over, and fire at Israel. It is more likely that one of the Arabs' shells, than an Israeli one, fell short (IMRA, 6/12). Perhaps Mr. Erlanger didn't read his own article. On page 6, it goes on to cite Israeli claims, but omitted specifics, that the evidence was not of an Israeli shell but a P.A. one. Is he taking an editorial stance he shouldn't, unaware of self-contradiction, or still trying to leave a sour taste about Israel. I find the latter the tendency in his newspaper. There is no evidence against Israel, just an Arab claim. Arab claims usually prove wrong. The Arabs engage in false propaganda deliberately, setting up elaborate hoaxes of battles. There is some evidence here against the Arabs, such as removal of additional evidence. They destroy their own parliament building! Do gangsters deserve statehood? Oh, let us take up a collection to replace that building "for humanitarian reasons!" INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT (ISM) Every Friday, ISM members incite Arabs in Bil'in to riot against Israeli troops guarding the security fence and to impede the search for terrorists at checkpoints. ISM wants those jihadists eventually to fight the US. The organization welcomes the publicity from the "martyrdom" of any members of the cult (Arutz-7, 5/30), played for fools. ARAB BOYCOTT & MEMBERSHIP IN FREE TRADE GROUP Several Arab states that were admitted to the World Trade Organization or otherwise signed free trade agreements stipulating they would stop boycotting Israel have been found by private organizations to be maintaining the boycott. Sen. Bingamon would like to amend the law to require closer US monitoring of Arab states' compliance with their agreements (IMRA, 6/12). Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
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HOW A FACTITIOUS DEMOCRACY EMASCULATES ISRAEL
Posted by Professor Paul Eidelberg, June 27, 2006. |
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A basic principle of democracy is the subordination of military to civilian authority. This principle prompts democracies to pursue a foreign policy based on peace, hence to resolve international conflicts by diplomatic rather than military means. What tests the mettle of a nation, however, is not peace but war. War often steels a nation's will, produces heroes, fosters self-sacrifice and dedication to the common good. In contrast, the quest for peace is often symptomatic of self-indulgence, cowardice, and decadence. Welcome to Israel. What has happened to this once dauntless nation? What has happened to its superb military establishment, the Israel Defense Forces? Alas, the IDF has been emasculated by Israel's political elites. Thanks to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert -- and this applies to his predecessor -- the IDF, in confronting Israel's Lilliputian but implacable enemy, is governed not by military or rational criteria, not by concern for Jewish lives or even Israel's survival, but by Olmert's feckless (and futile) concern over PR or international public opinion. Olmert has surrendered the country to spin doctors. Hence he has no need of a Defense Minister more competent than Amir Peretz, a man without military expertise. And since Olmert has no intention of engaging and destroying the enemy in land warfare, what more does he need as the nation's Chief of General Staff than former Air Force commander Dan Halutz? The terrorists in Gaza as well as in Judea and Samaria never had it so good. But what about the General Staff itself? Unfortunately, Israeli officers have been politicized by the mere fact that they can retire at the age of 45 and then become Knesset members and even cabinet ministers. Without any political experience on their part, the door to the Knesset and the cabinet is opened to high-ranking officers by the parliamentary system of fixed party lists. The prospect of a political career makes them yes-men, corrupting their military integrity. None will resign in public protest against a government whose policy of appeasing the enemy cannot but multiply IDF casualties and endanger the nation's security. Of course, high-ranking officers can always take cover behind the democratic principle of military subordination to civilian authority. Amazing how much Israel suffers from the necessity of preserving its reputation as a democracy -- which requires Israeli prime ministers to pursue a policy of self-restraint against Arab terrorists, negotiate with despotic Arab thugs, and thus yield Jewish land and sacrifice Jewish lives in this ignoble and funereal quest for peace. Under Israel's erstwhile warrior, Ariel Sharon, more than 1,000 Jews were murdered by Arab terrorists, while some 5,000 more were wounded, many maimed for life. And now, under Ehud Olmert, while Kassam missiles are raining down on Sderot, the hands of the IDF are tied, making it wrenchingly obvious that Jews are disposable in the secular and reputedly democratic state of Israel. Therefore I say to the people of this country: 1) So long as this state remains a state tied by an umbilical chord to America, it will remain a paltry state and you will be sacrificed on the altar of PR. 2) So long as this state remains a state whose laws are merely a product of transient human will, it will remain a paltry state and you and your children will be expendable. 3) So long as this state remains a state that has no higher law than the immediate and narrow interests of men, it will remain a paltry state and your lives will count less than those of your enemies. 4) So long as this state remains a state divorced from God, this state will have paltry prime ministers who, in the deceitful language of "peace" and "democracy" will betray you and your noble heritage. 5) As for your General Staff, it will continue to genuflect to the cretins and cravens who rule your factitious democracy -- yes, and will do so in the name of a System of Governance that has made you powerless. Professor Paul Eidelberg is President of the Foundation For Constitutional Democracy. He can be reached by mail at 244 Madison Avenue, Suite 427, New York, NY 10016, Tel: 212-372-3752, and by email at Constitution@usa.net |
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ISRAEL'S RUDE AWAKENING
Posted by Sergio Tessa -- HaDaR, June 27, 2006. |
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This article was written by Caroline Glick and it appeared today in
The Jerusalem Post
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It is painful to watch Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni try to contend with the terrible outcome of the Palestinian terror strike against the IDF on Sunday morning. They use so many fancy and angry words. They sound so resolute. And yet, they have nothing useful to say. Two soldiers are dead, a third is now the prisoner of jihadist killers, seven are wounded, an IDF border post has been overrun, and a world view and a security doctrine have been blown to smithereens. Olmert and his associates have four general messages. First, they tell us that Palestinian Authority Chairman and Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas is responsible for bringing about Cpl. Gilad Shalit's release. Second, they say Hamas better watch out because they're gonna get it. Third, they say that Hamas won't get it until later. Finally, while stipulating that they will not negotiate with Hamas, Olmert and his associates are negotiating with Hamas. None of these messages and none of the actions that attend to them have any chance of making Israel safer. They also hold little promise of bringing Cpl. Shalit home. Yet there is next to no possibility that Olmert or his associates will widen their options to include any relevant responses to Sunday's terror offensive. Doing so would involve an admission that what the Kadima and Labor parties have presented to the public as their world view is wrong. That world view involves a denial of a basic, fundamental truth: When you empower terrorists, terrorists are empowered. WE HAVE been in this situation before. Six years ago, in October 2000, on the eve of Yom Kippur then prime minister Ehud Barak gave Yasser Arafat an ultimatum. He was ordered to end all the violence he had fomented within 48 hours or face the consequences. When as the deadline passed Arafat continued the violence, Barak did nothing. He did nothing because he could do nothing. His entire government was based on the idea of making peace with Arafat by empowering him. When Arafat chose war, Barak had nothing to say. Kadima and Labor insist that by empowering terrorists they are somehow weakening them. This is the notion that stands at the base of the government's insistence on reenacting the empowerment of Hamas and Fatah caused by last summer's retreat from Gaza by repeating it twenty-fold in Judea and Samaria. Somehow, destroying Israeli communities, ordering the retreat of IDF forces and so enabling the terrorist takeover of those lands is - according to Olmert and his associates - supposed to bring about the enhancement of Israel's security through the weakening of terrorists that Israel is empowering. Ahead of Sunday night's security cabinet meeting, Olmert reportedly told IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz not to present any wide-scale military options to the cabinet. This makes sense. Any major operation, just like any real discussion of Israel's security situation or its options for contending with it would show the failure of the government's retreat policy. And so the government entertains only fictions. The first fiction the government entertains is that of PA Chairman and Fatah Chief Mahmoud Abbas as anti-terrorist peace partner who must be empowered. Abbas is viewed as an irreplaceable resource and ally of Israel. If he goes, Israel will face nothing but Hamas. And since Hamas is bad, Abbas must be good. Unfortunately, Abbas is a terrorist too. Abbas has pocketed the money, arms and legitimacy that Olmert, the Bush administration and the EU have given him and proceeded to buck up his terrorist credentials. He appointed Mahmoud Damra, a top Fatah terrorist as the commander of his personal army Force 17. Damra is wanted by Israel for his direct involvement in the murders of scores of Israelis since 2001. Abbas took the thousands of rifles and millions of rounds of ammunition the US gave him last month and had his security chief Muhammad Dahlan issue a joint call with Hamas for the murder of all Palestinians suspected of assisting Israel in its counter-terror operations. He has been negotiating a blueprint for war - authored by jailed Fatah mass murderer Marwan Barghouti - with Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and has been touting the document as a peace plan. And, his Fatah organization is as responsible for Sunday's strike against Israel as Hamas. The Popular Resistance Committees, a Fatah front group that also includes Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists claims to be holding Cpl. Shalit. Fatah has threatened to attack Israel with chemical and biological weapons and to renew shooting attacks on neighborhoods in southern Jerusalem if the IDF launches a major operation in Gaza. But none of this can be acknowledged because acknowledging that Abbas is a terrorist would mean acknowledging that empowering him means empowering terrorists. THEN THERE is the doctrine of the security fence. Olmert and his colleagues are big proponents of replacing defensive strategies with slogans and one of their favorite ones is "We'll be here and they will be there." Israel will build a fence and we'll never have to deal with the Palestinians again. But then those mean old Palestinians showed us on Sunday that they can dig beneath our fence. They show us daily that they can launch missiles and rockets and mortars above the fence. They can build ladders to climb over the fence. And of course, they can simply subcontract their killing to their collaborators on our side of the fence. But this cannot be acknowledged because doing so would be tantamount to an admission that Olmert and his associates have been passing off cliches as security plans for the past four years. The bombardment of the Western Negev that holds the population and the economy of southern Israel hostage to the whims of jihadist cells with rocket launchers has shown up another major myth that forms the basis of Olmert's world view. Olmert and his associates claim that the IDF deployment in Gaza was wasteful because all those forces were being used just to defend those annoying, fanatical settlers in Gush Katif and northern Gaza. But as the bombardment and the IDF's inability to stop the bombardment from outside Gaza shows, the IDF was not in Gaza to protect the Israelis who lived there. The IDF was in Gaza to protect Israel. Any major IDF offensive in Gaza would constitute an admission of this truth. Yet since the government's only policy is to reenact last summer's retreat in Judea and Samaria, it cannot acknowledge this truth. It needs the public to believe that the safety of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem can be guaranteed by having IDF forces sitting in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. It needs the public to believe that settlers are the cause of their misfortunes and not the jihadists who are waging war against our country. That is, they need the public to believe that empowering terrorists doesn't empower terrorists. FINALLY, OLMERT cannot allow a counter-terror offensive in Gaza because doing so will lead to international condemnation of Israel. It isn't the impact of the condemnation Israel's international standing that concerns him. Olmert cannot be condemned internationally because he promised that after Israel retreated from Gaza, the international community would accept any Israeli counter-terror offensives in Gaza. Sunday's attack and Cpl. Shalit's kidnapping are watershed events. In the coming days and weeks, it will become self-evident to the Israeli public as a whole just how indefensible Olmert's plan to empower terrorists actually is. Yet public recognition of his plan's failure is not enough. In 2000, the public realized that Barak's terrorist empowering peace plan had brought us war. Yet rather than discard the policy of empowering terrorists, our political leaders simply repackaged it. What had formerly been called "peace" was called "separation" and "disengagement" and now is called "convergence" or "realignment." These euphemisms are sold to the public in turn as new quick-fixes that spare us the need to recognize the reality of war. So to our fervent prayers for Cpt. Shalit's rescue, we should add another prayer. We should pray that whereas the demise of the so-called peace process did not cause the demise of its core policy of empowering terrorists, the demise of Olmert's retreat policy will also cause the burial of the notion that empowering terrorists can do anything other than make terrorists more powerful. Contact HaDar at HaDaR-Israel@verizon.net |
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BULLIES IN JUDGES' CLOAKS
Posted by Moshe Feiglin, June 27, 2006. |
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As of this writing, Oryah Shirel, age 15, has been sitting in an Israeli jail for 13 days. She has not been charged with any crime. Oryah's father is an American citizen and her mother is a Canadian citizen. Oryah lives with her parents and eight siblings in Hebron. |
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15-year-old Oryah Shirel is in jail indefinitely. But she has the key. All she has to do is to sign on bail. She refuses to do it. Oryah was arrested at a demonstration outside the kindergarten in her hometown of Hebron. She and hundreds of others had protested the Israeli government's rebuilding of an Arab home, a structure from which Jewish children in the school playground had previously been attacked. In her decision to return Oryah to her prison cell, Judge Shalev-Gartel wrote that there is no basis to believe that Oryah acted in an illegal manner. So how does a wholesome teenager who doesn't smoke, drink or do drugs end up in prison? Why doesn't she have the basic rights afforded to all minors that include the privilege to call home and to receive clean clothing? Oryah hasn't studied law. She probably cannot analyze complex situations like we, the adults, can. But Oryah has good common sense, a still unmarred perspective on reality and youthful innocence that penetrates all the layers of falsehood to which we have become accustomed. We adults need to work hard every morning to find the truth. But Oryah simply lives it. When she saw how the entire judicial system was used against the Jewish majority in Gush Katif, and when she saw how it covered up all abominations -- from Sharon's corruption to the abusive and violent police in Amona -- she understood the reality of her own situation. She declared, "You've broken all the pieces and I'm not playing the game -- I do not recognize you and am willing to be judged only according to the laws of the Torah." The poor judge didn't know exactly what to do. The defiant young girl in her courtroom had removed the mask that conceals the collective face of the system. So the judge wrote "Classified Information" in large letters at the top of the protocol of the hearing. It was a futile attempt to hide the decadence of a system that concentrates on fighting against young girls and boys, children who no longer have questions. What they do have is a simple answer that shows the way that we need to struggle today. At base, what Oryah and others like her are saying to us is, "Stop cooperating with these anti-Semites. We are the ones affording them legitimacy. Stop giving them the oxygen that they need to destroy us. Stop giving them your recognition. Because in truth, Judge Shalev-Gartel represents nothing at all. She is passé, still around only because nothing has replaced her -- yet. The positive Zionism that built this country and nurtured it is finished. The truth, morality and the positive energy are all with Oryah. If Oryah had tried to defend herself, she would have become part of the game. Essentially, she would be acknowledging the legitimacy of the Israeli judicial system. So we see that more than Oryah needs the judge, the judge needs Oryah! And Oryah has deftly disconnected the judge's oxygen supply. But now we must address an underlying issue. Does the judge really not have the authority to try Oryah Shirel? The answer is not so simple. Every state must have a judicial system. If not, anarchy would reign. What would Oryah do if she had a monetary claim? Or a civil suit? Would she then be willing to relinquish the right to defend herself? Oryah demands to be judged according to the laws of the Torah. And she is right, of course. But we are not living in rectified reality. We still drink the water from the State's pipes, use its electricity and speak through its phone lines. We still live in the Israeli reality. Yes, we are attempting (slowly but surely) to build a rectified reality on its base. But in the current corrupt reality into which G-d has inserted us, the judge has the authority -- and the obligation -- to try us. So the problem is not the authority of the judge, but rather the credibility of the judge. Israel's judicial system lost its credibility (and also its honor) in the ruins of Gush Katif. When minors are brought to trial in groups, when 8,000 Gush Katif residents are given fifteen minutes to argue in court against their expulsion, when murderers are freed wholesale while children are imprisoned until the end of the proceedings against them, there is no justice. What we have instead is judicial bullying. Judges have the authority to judge, but not to be bullies in judge's cloaks. Instead of saying, "I don't recognize the court's authority," I think that Oryah should be saying, "I don't have any faith in the judicial system." The unpleasant truth is that if you are arrested for a "patriotic offense" there is no reason to defend yourself. The system simply has no credibility. There is no reason to hire a lawyer. But even if you decide to forgo the services of a lawyer and the right to defend yourself against the band of anti-Jewish tyrants currently occupying the judges' seats, you do not have to go to jail. We appear in court because they force us to do so -- not because we have any faith in the court's credibility. We sign on bail because they force us to do so. The judges are nothing more than bullies. Is it worthwhile to make claims and counterclaims? Forget it. Should you hire a defense attorney? It's superfluous. Should you represent yourself? Don't bother. What you need to say is, "I am here against my will. You have forced me to be here. The police behind me are here to make sure that I don't run away. I am signing on bail not because I accept you as a credible judge, but because I can't afford to go to jail. There is no trial here, and I will not take part in the farce. The only thing going on here is coercion. And I have no faith in bullies. Manhigut Yehudit (Jewish Leadership) is a group of people inside the Likud party who want to see Israel adopt a more Jewish character. Moshe Feiglin, its cofounder, has emphatically said he does not want a theocracy, but he does want a State based on Jewish values. The Manhigut Yehudit website address is http://www.manhigut.org. Moshe Feiglin writes "Manhigut Yehudit is the largest faction inside the Likud Party in Israel. It strives to turn Israel from The State of the Jews into The Jewish State. Contact: Shmuel Sackett, International Director (516) 330-4922 (cell)" |
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MY SPEECH AT THE WORLD BETAR CONVENTION
Posted by Rachel Saperstein, June 26, 2006. |
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The World Betar Convention took place at the Hyatt Hotel, Jerusalem, June 17, 2006. Saturday night, July 24th, I spoke to the young people of Betar, the Likud youth movement. Gathered from all parts of Israel and abroad, they came to see and to be heard. They are beautiful young men and women, their intense love of Israel -- all of Israel, was a pleasure to witness. Representing Gush Katif, speaking from my heart, I spoke to them. They listened carefully and later came to thank me. Standing on the balcony of the hotel, the lights of Jerusalem behind me and these upturned dedicated young faces in front of me, I spoke these words: |
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Erev Tov and Shavua Tov. My name is Rachel Saperstein. I am 65, a wife, mother and grandmother. I came from New York to live in my homeland 38 years ago. My husband and I once lived in a beautiful home in Gush Katif. Today I am a refugee. We were forcibly removed from our home by the State of Israel. Not by the non-Jewish government of a foreign country but by the Jewish government of my own homeland. My husband lost his right arm in the Yom Kippur War. We never uttered a word of regret. We loved our country. We were ready to sacrifice. Our daughter was injured on a bus blown up by a suicide bomber. We never uttered a word of regret. It was part of the price of living in our homeland. We moved to Gush Katif from Jerusalem and the mortars and Kassam rockets fell on us night and day. We never complained for we knew we were holding on to our precious land. And when my husband was shot by a Palestinian policeman and lost part of his remaining hand, we remained silent and proud of our privilege to give to our land. And then we were rewarded for our bravery, for our courage. We and the eight thousand men, women and children of Gush Katif. We who held on to the land, we who defended our land against Arab murderers, were forced out by Jewish soldiers and Jewish police. We were put into tiny hotel rooms, flimsy tent cities and despicable trailers and, finally, into cardboard houses called "caravillas". Our possessions were locked away in containers, often destroyed by rats. We watched our homes razed, our synagogues burnt. We were left penniless. Today our children cannot concentrate on their studies, our people still weep, for we are all traumatized. Many of our men have died of heart attacks. Within 24 hours a once vital people were turned into the homeless and unemployed. The government of Israel declared that we were well compensated. That was a lie. Farmers with once thriving businesses sit and stare at television. Promises of land remain just that -- promises. The small amounts of compensation are being eaten up each day. Mortgages on destroyed homes are still being paid to the banks. Private people come to give us handouts. Supermarkets donate food for the Sabbath meals. Donations are given so that infants can receive formula and diapers. Brides receive household gifts from caring strangers. This is what the government of Israel, the Likud government of Israel, did to its people. We voted the Likud government into office under their banner of security and protecting the land. They lied to the people of Israel. Where were you? Where were the massive demonstrations to fight the evil decree? We experienced the opposite of every principle of Likud, of Menahem Begin, of Vladimir Jabotinsky, of Yosef Trumpeldor. Our precious land was given to our deadly enemies. Jews were pulled out of their homes. I am one of those Jews. You are those Jews because this is your home, too. We were betrayed. You were betrayed. You must not allow this to happen again. Today the prime minister promises other expulsions. You must not allow this to happen. Gush Katif is not a place -- it is a concept. It s every one of us. Gush Katif is the symbol of courage. You must have the courage to say NO. NEVER AGAIN. You must never reward any politician who voted for the expulsion with the privilege of serving in any office of the Likud. Likud must return to its ideology. The ideology of Eretz Yisrael l'Am Yisrael, the Land of Israel for the People of Israel. Gush Katif must never happen again. NEVER. NEVER AGAIN. Lo Nishkach v'Lo Nislach! We will not forget! We will not forgive! And we will return to Gush Katif! Rachel Saperstein and her husband Moshe lived in Neve Dekalim, Gush Katif, Gaza, Israel. She was a teacher at the Neve Dekalim ulpana and a spokeswoman for the Katif Regional Council. Her recent book, "Eviction: A Gush Katif Viewpoint", with photos by Moti Sender can be ordered from www.pavilionpress.com. They now live in a trailor camp in Nitzan. |
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A CONVERSATION BETWEEN U.S. PRES BUSH AND ISRAELI P.M. OLMERT
Posted by Marcel Cousineau, June 26, 2006. |
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Bush - I know you have problems in Gaza, Ehud, but you just can't go in, it will ruin our sucess and destroy momentum for Israel's destruction, oops, I mean for the Road Map peace plan. Olmert - But Mr. President, I'm under great pressure to do something. Bush - Just talk tough and mass your troops on the border with Gaza and do nothing else or I will cut you off. There are many there ready to take your place, remember that. I want to make it abundantly clear that you are not to go into Gaza,a small limited and restrained response is all that I will allow you to appease your citizens. Also I want you to crush without mercy the right who are the only opposition to my Final Solution Road Map for Israel. Demonize them, arrest them, harass them and hound them, kill them if you have to. Hitler would be proud, my plan has successfully flown under the radar and the majority of Christian's and Jews are completely off guard and asleep. Even as I protect the Palestinian terrorists and keep Israel from defeating them under threats and hard pressure they still support me. These fools are so easy to decieve and seduce. They voted for me and I work day and night to bring about Satan's New World Order. Israel has no place in this plan. Olmert - Mr. President, I went along with your plan to send thousands of weapons and ammunition to the PA, I went along with Amona, but I'm afraid some of my Military Commanders are waking up to what is going on. Bush- Don't worry, if you got a problem I'll send some of my best silencers over there and take care of it for you. We've got to neutralize Israel to get the Arabs on base with our global agenda and thats the only way they'll stay on board. We've got to deliver. Olmert - Yes sir Mr. President, I'm happy to serve you and your glorious plan. I am your obedient servant. Marcel Cousineau can be reached at up2zionsg8@yahoo.com or go to his website: http://averyheavystone.blogspot.com |
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MINGLING WITH PLANET EARTH, INC.
Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, June 26, 2006. |
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Planet Earth, an orb composed of ethnic tribes surrounded by national borders, rapidly evolves into Planet Earth Inc, a global corporation without borders. One such tribe with borders, the tiny besieged nation of Israel, must ever defend itself from its militant newly formed neighbor Gaza, led by Islamic fundamentalist Hamas fanatics, as well as blatantly skewed world opinion, no doubt influenced by the seemly fact oil-addicted nations, in lock step with oil corporations, must bow to politically craven terms, etched within extorted Faustian fossil fuel contracts, entered into with Islamic rogue anti-Israeli rulers of the Middle East. What, however, might happen if say petrol leviathan Exxon-Mobil was enticed to set up a research and development facility, operated by Israeli scientists, in Defense Minister Amir Peretz's hometown Sderot, currently a seductive blip located within the crosshairs of abutting Gaza terrorist missile fire? Might a powerful incentive consequentially be launched to cease and desist from such criminal rocket launchings? If indeed "Big Oil" was to follow the magnanimous but shrewd lead of the world's second wealthiest individual, investor icon Warren Buffet, a prescient soul willing to invest a substantial cache of greenbacks into an Israeli company thus Israel's macro-economy, the Jewish State would begin to develop an impenetrable "capital shield" over its territory, guaranteed protection by the ever respected "almighty buck" so defining Planet Earth Inc. Even such jewel-laden silk robe bedecked sleaze, as the mover and shaker rogue royal House of Saud, underwriters of Wahhabi Jew/infidel despising extremism, salivate over and surely worship that "almighty buck". Furthermore, an evolving Donald Trump skyscraping edifice, soon to cast its capital presence over international dynamo Tel Aviv, will add an additional pillar of prestige as well as security to this bustling Israeli metropolis. Don't mess with the world's financial Big Kahunas! Corporate boardrooms always frown on miscreant cultists, whose abominable mischief reduces bottom-lines, a cardinal sin that will not be tolerated. Hamas, Hezbollah, and all other fringe fundamentally flawed cadres of hostile anti-secular delusional humans, remain incompatible with the imperatives of Planet Earth Inc. The ever-present ghost of a most traumatic 9/11must not be resurrected into another tangible catastrophe, ever-insured by a watchful no nonsense corporate world, thus Israel would be wise to firmly establish itself as a respected influential force within all Planet Earth Inc. boardrooms, governed by entrepreneurs affiliated with the world's industrial nations. It doesn't hurt to mingle with the money crowd every now and then. Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at luniglicht@snip.net |
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NEW ONLINE: LEARN HEBREW - WITH AUDIO AND TRANSLITERATIONS
Posted by Jacob Richman, June 26, 2006. |
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This week I launched a new website called:
Learn Hebrew is a free, on-line, educational resource to learn Hebrew words. The flash site incorporates 46 topics, along with over 1,700 Hebrew words and phrases. Each Hebrew word is presented as an image with nikud [vowels]. When you click on a word or phrase you can hear it spoken. The high quality audio was created in a sound studio. The site is multilingual. The menus, transliterations and translations are in four languages: English, French, Russian and Spanish. Both the student and the teacher will find the site easy to use and very educational. As mentioned, the site is free to all. Feedback is welcome. Please forward this message to anyone that may be interested
in learning Hebrew. Thank you!
Contact Jacob Richman at jrichman@jr.co.il |
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GUNS BEFORE BUTTER
Posted by Jonathan Spyer, June 26, 2006. |
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In the last few days, the Quartet have finalized the details for the new emergency aid mechanism to the Palestinian territories. According to its remit, the mechanism is to provide "needs-based assistance directly to the Palestinian people, including essential equipment, supplies and support for health services, support for the uninterrupted supply of fuel and utilities, and basic needs allowances to poor Palestinians." If the mechanism manages to alleviate hardships suffered by innocent Palestinians--as a result, of course, of their government's refusal to accept Israel's right to exist, commit to existing agreements and so on--then it is surely to be welcomed. One can't help noticing, however, that the introduction of the aid mechanism creates a strange, two-tier structure of financing for the Palestinian authority (PA). According to this structure, the international community will agree to pick up the tab on mundane daily matters. This, in turn, will leave the elected Islamist rulers of the authority free to pursue matters that they find of greater interest. They will be in the enviable situation among governing authorities of being free to pursue higher, historic tasks, safe in the knowledge that someone else--in this case the generous taxpayer of Europe and North America--has taken on the job of preventing famine and societal collapse in the areas under their control. What, then, are the other interests which the Hamas rulers of the PA are likely to use their increased leisure time to engage in? Well, recent events offer a series of clues. On May 19, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu-Zahri was apprehended at the Rafah Crossing by PA security forces, while trying to smuggle in between 650-900,000 euros in cash. Abu-Zahri, one of the senior Hamas leaders in Gaza, at first refused to leave without the cash, and a tense stand-off ensued between PA (Fatah-controlled) security forces and Hamas gunmen at the scene. Abu-Zahri's indiscretion was only the first of a number to have come to light. Thus, on June 15, the PA foreign minister, Mahmoud al-Zahar, was caught trying to smuggle in the sum of $20m in cash, in 12 separate suitcases. Now if these were two occasions when the intrepid smugglers were caught, there were probably other occasions when they or their colleagues were not. Israel considers that the smuggling tunnels between Gaza and Egypt, a favoured route for bringing in weapons to the Strip, are also being used to bring in cash. But since Hamas dominates the elected government of the PA, why, then, is there a need to smuggle these funds past the PA's own security forces? Why, in fact, was the PA foreign minister, al-Zahar, trying to bring money past security guards who, at least nominally, are under his own command? There's a simple answer. It's the two-tier funding structure. The official coffers--meant for all the boring stuff like doctors' and nurses' salaries and medical equipment and drugs--were empty at the same moment that Hamas officials were smuggling in bagfuls of cash. And the fact that the money wasn't to be declared to the PA indicates that those official coffers were going to stay empty. This, of course, could be blamed on the wicked Israelis, and could wait until the Quartet chose to intervene. No hurry. Not the PA government's problem. The bagfuls of cash, meanwhile, were going to be spent on the exciting, important stuff. Like feeding, training and equipping a brand new 3,000 strong militia to face off against the parallel militias founded by one's political opponents. And financing the production and launching of rockets at the towns of the western Negev. What is interesting about this process is that it captures in miniature one of the basic developmental problems of many of the states of the Arabic-speaking world. It casts light on one of the processes that has kept well-funded countries poor and lagging behind in development. For as long as the ruling elites--nationalist and Islamist--of the Arab world consider that marching about in military uniforms and producing blood-curdling rhetoric are the real business of politics--with health care and living standards a minor concern unworthy of serious attention--the Arab world is going to stay poor and undeveloped--and real democratization remain a distant, receding hope. Alleviating hardship is of course a worthy goal. But the current system of aid to the PA plays the additional role of propping up dysfunctionality. Dr. Jonathan Spyer is a research fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs Center (GLORIA) at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya. Contact GLORIA by email at gloria@idc.ac.il or by phone at +972-9-960-2736. This article appeared in The Guardian, June 21, 2006. |
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ISRAEL NEEDS THE "ILLEGAL" OUTPOSTS
Posted by Lee Caplan, June 26, 2006. |
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A major problem facing the IDF, as a Shabak official told the Knesset Law Committee last week, is the dearth of intelligence emanating from Gaza ever since the Disengagement. The Deputy Investigations Department chief of the General Security Service told the committee that the "lack of intelligence in Gaza places us in a very problematic position." This situation contrasts with that in Judea and Samaria, where the army has intelligence sources. PLEASE DAVEN FOR GILAD BEN AVIVA SHALIT WHO IS BEING HELD BY PALESTINIAN TERRORIST MURDEROUS BARBARIANS! |
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"Distancing Orders Issued to Outpost Activists" by Hillel Fendel, Arutz-Sheva. The government has taken its first steps to destroy four Jewish outposts in Judea and Samaria, distributing restraining orders against some 15 activists on Friday and Sunday. O.C. Central Command Maj.-Gen. Yair Naveh signed the orders, forbidding the recipients from nearing the threatened neighborhoods. Activists who live in pre-1967 Israel are banned from entering Judea and Samaria (Yesha) altogether. The orders are valid for between three months and a year, and are designed to prevent active opposition to the plans to destroy the Jewish presence in parts of Yesha. The Yesha Council - the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria - attacked the non-democratic nature of the government's move. Essentially stating that people should be arrested after they commit crimes, and not before, the Council said, "Administrative measures of this nature are a tool that should be used with great caution and as a last resort in order to prevent violence. The regime must take care not to harm citizens' freedom of movement and their civil rights. We are liable to easily slide down a slippery slope using this tool, as we saw during the Disengagement." On the government's chopping bloc at present are four outpost neighborhoods: Scali, next to Elon Moreh; Hilltop 725, just south of Yitzhar; Arusi, near Har Brachah - all in the Shomron - and the Maon Farm in the Southern Hevron Hills. The Scali outpost, four kilometers east of central Elon Moreh, was started by Yitzchak Scali in 1999. He now lives there with his wife and three children. Another four families and several singles live there as well, most of them in wood houses, and they have a synagogue made of stone. Elon Moreh spokesman and veteran settlement leader Benny Katzover told Arutz-7, "Some of the wood houses were reinforced with stone as a result of two terror attacks on the outpost - one that happened two years ago, when our forces killed two terrorists, and another one four years ago." No Jews were seriously hurt in these attacks. Katzover said that by intending to destroy Scali, the government is violating an agreement it made back when Ehud Barak was prime minister. That agreement involved the "authorization" of some outposts, in exchange for the removal of some others. "This neighborhood has passed many other legal battles as well," Katzover said, "and the location of each building was precisely determined in conjunction with the Civil Administration." Hill 725, established several years ago, is an integral part of the Shomron community of Yitzhar, communally and municipally. This, despite the fact that its houses ar physically separated from its parent community by a kilometer. Five families currently live in the neighborhood, including one with ten children. Of the six buildings on Hill 725, two or three are permanent structures made of wood. A synagogue/study hall also stands on the site. The Arusi outpost, with 15 families, is so named because it was founded seven years ago by Ronen Arusi, who has since married and lives there with his wife and children. It is an integral part of the community of Har Brachah, though it is separated from most of the town by three kilometers of hills and fields. The Maon Farm, outside the community of Maon south of Hevron, is also populated by several families. The names of those who received the orders have not been publicized. Residents of one of the outposts said in response, "The government is wasting its time. We plan to live in the outposts and build them up." Aviad Visuly, head of the Land of Israel Task Force, suggests that those who received the restraining orders should turn to the courts for redress, and could even sue Gen. Naveh personally. "Administrative detention orders against someone might mean that he is planning to commit a crime," Visuly said, "but restraining orders of this type have no basis whatsoever." "Report Shows: Outposts are Not Illegal" by Hillel Fendel, Arutz-Sheva. As the gov't prepares to destroy what it calls "unauthorized" outposts, the Shomron Regional Council presents evidence that the outposts are no more " unauthorized" than many other Israeli towns. The Shomron Regional Council has prepared an extensive slide show, concentrating on several aspects of construction and authorization of new neighborhoods and communities in Israel. It aims to offset the Sasson report of over a year ago. In March 2005, State Prosecution attorney Talia Sasson prepared a report against the outposts in Judea and Samaria, terming the construction of new communities in Yesha over the years "institutionalized law-breaking." The report listed the ways in which the government "closed its eyes and enabled" the establishment of the new settlements. Various ministries and official bodies gave their own approval to each individual step, but the final approval was rarely given until much later, if at all. The Shomron Council presentation, citing the State Comptroller's report of 2005 and many other sources, shows that the outposts were built in the same manner as many towns in Israel over the years. For instance: * Yardena - along the Jordan River, north of Beit She'an - was established in 1952, but received its final authorization only 30 years later. The report also notes the extent of illegal Arab construction that is being all but ignored by the relevant authorities. It cites 399 illegal Arab-sector construction sites throughout the country, including no fewer than 30,444 units. In eastern Jerusalem, of 5,657 illegal units, only 261 were razed in the years 2001-2004, or less than 5%. A fair share of the Shomron Council presentation relates to the illegal use of land by large municipal councils around the country. In the Hof HaSharon (Sharon Coast) Regional Council, for instance, the community of Batzra used agricultural land for commercial purposes, and other towns similarly misused land. In addition, between 1988 and 2004, primarily in the 1990s, the city of Tel Aviv-Jaffa built 223,100 square meters (over 2.4 million square feet) of office space in an area where, up until 2001, such construction was forbidden. The State Comptroller, in his report on this issue in 2005, wrote, "It must be thoroughly checked what causes a large local council to adopt alternative methods to those stipulated by the law, in order to implement its planning policies. Claims that municipal councils are restricted in their building plans must be dealt with." An important aspect of the Shomron Council's presentation on outposts is a 1999 Knesset speech by then-MK Ariel Sharon explaining the rationale governing the construction of the outposts. Ironically, it was Sharon, as Prime Minister, who later asked for and accepted Sasson's report against the outposts. Sharon told the Knesset, "Why did the government, at the time, decide to establish outposts on the hilltops? Was it just a whim, or a way of outsmarting someone? Not at all. The hilltop outposts were designed to enable the Jewish communities that were built by the Alignment [Labor] and Likud governments ever since the Six Day War, in areas that were designed to be security areas in our control under any agreement, to live in security, even while the diplomatic process continues. A campaign is underway to email the presentation to many Knesset Members: dazulay@knesset.gov.il; aatias@knesset.gov.il; eamsalem@knesset.gov.il; slomob@knesset.gov.il; yvaknin@knesset.gov.il; nzeev@knesset.gov.il; eyishay@knesset.gov.il; amncohen@knesset.gov.il; izchakec@knesset.gov.il; amichaeli@knesset.gov.il; ymargi@knesset.gov.il; mnahari@knesset.gov.il; mgafni@knesset.gov.il; shmuelh@knesset.gov.il; ycohen@knesset.gov.il; ylitzman@knesset.gov.il; mporush@knesset.gov.il; aravitz@knesset.gov.il; iaharon@knesset.gov.il; rilatov@knesset.gov.il; ahason@knesset.gov.il; etertman@knesset.gov.il; aliberman@knesset.gov.il; slandver@knesset.gov.il; amiller@knesset.gov.il; smiseznikov@knesset.gov.il; yshtern@knesset.gov.il; lshemtov@knesset.gov.il; zorlev@knesset.gov.il; efye@knesset.gov.il; belon@knesset.gov.il; egabai@knesset.gov.il; ithakl@knesset.gov.il; nslomianski@knesset.gov.il; meitan@knesset.gov.il; gerdan@knesset.gov.il; mcachlon@knesset.gov.il; yiskatz@knesset.gov.il; llivnat@knesset.gov.il; dnaveh@knesset.gov.il; bnetanyahu@knesset.gov.il ; gsaar@knesset.gov.il; rrivlin@knesset.gov.il; ysteinitz@knesset.gov.il; sshalom@knesset.gov.il; ntans@knesset.gov.il; zhanegbi@knesset.gov.il; zelkin@knesset.gov.il; davidt@knesset.gov.il The website of the Shomron Regional Council http://www.shomron.org.il has a FANTASTIC new presentation on the topic of outposts (in Hebrew). It shows that the "illegal outposts" are just like the "Christian children who were baked in order to make Passover matzas" -- a lie which any respectable journalist ought to be embarrassed to publish. The presentation also shows the proposed governmental method for getting authorization to build a legal outpost (slides 47 - 51). The method proposed would take 7 years (!!!) -- which is like the authorities saying, it's illegal to cross the street unless there's a green light, and then programming the light to change only every 7 hours. To save the outposts from being destroyed, with ZERO compensation paid to the families living there, kindly forward this entire email to 49 MKs. The list of the MKs' email addresses is above (scroll up). Simply press "forward", then "color" the entire list of email addresses with your mouse and move it to the "to" field of the new email you have formed. The purpose of sending this email along to the MKs is to make the outposts issue the "hot issue" in the Knesset this week (MKs know how to count. If they get an email many times -- they read it. If they get the email only a few times, they don't read it -- or they read it and don't act upon it). BONUS: By doing this, you are also saving 13 Israeli citizens like
yourself from unnecessary administrative detention Thank you for your kind cooperation in forwarding this email to the Knesset Members. Sincerely,
Contact Lee Caplan at leescaplan@yahoo.com
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WINSTON CHURCHILL'S GRANDSON ON ANTI-SEMITISM
Posted by Sandy Rosen-Hazen, June 26, 2006. |
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This amazed me, as it well might amaze many of you..... It contains history of which SO many are not aware!!!! I've read it and re-read it twice.....realizing that it is something I absolutely MUST share with as many people as possible!!!! It's called "Confronting The Challenge of Islamic Fundamentalism:" and it is an Address to the Jewish National Fund of Australia at their Annual Dinner at the Palladium at the Crown Hotel, Melbourne, on Sunday, 28 May 2006 > by Winston S. Churchill, grandson of Winston Churchill, who was Prime Minister of England during WW2. If you have no time to read it, in FULL, right now..... PLEASE print it out to read later, at your convenience, and PLEASE be sure to forward it to everyone you know!!!! Thank you.....
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Governor, yr Excellencies, Mr. President, Members of JNF, Ladies & Gentlemen, It is both an honour and a pleasure to be your guest in Melbourne tonight, and to have the privilege of addressing this important assembly of the Jewish National Fund of Australia. May I say how delighted I am to be back in Melbourne -- the last time was nearly 40 years ago when I had the huge privilege of speaking at the feet of that great and most lovable Australian & friend of my Grandfather's, Sir Bob Menzies who, as Chancellor of the University, had invited me to deliver the Moomba Oration in 1968 or '69! Last year we commemorated the 60th Anniversary of the end of World War II, and with it the Liberation of the Concentration Camps of Europe. That should remind us all of the continuing importance of the fight against anti-Semitism. We like to think that we are today living in a kinder, more tolerant age than our forebears. Nonetheless, racial and religious intolerance, hatred and persecution -- the scourge of our times -- are never far away. They manifest themselves in so many ways -- in bullying at school, obscene graffiti sprayed on graves or public buildings, verbal abuse and, at their most extreme, murder, mass-murder, including suicide bombings, and genocide. Of course the problem goes far wider than anti-Semitism. It extends to innumerable other racial and religious groupings beyond the Jews. In the 1990s in Rwanda, the Tutsis became the victims of genocide on a horrendous scale at the hands of their Hutu neighbours; in Srebrenica in July 1995 some 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were massacred by the Serb army, under the very noses of the UN protecting force. In recent months Christians have been massacred by Muslims in Pakistan. At this very moment in Darfur, the Christians of Southern Sudan are being slaughtered by the Muslim Janjaweed militiamen in a brutal exercise of ethnic cleansing, while just last week Australian troops have had to be rushed to East Timor to quell the vicious racial violence that has broken out there. Of course, all decent, responsible people, wherever in the world they may live, whatever god they may or may not bow down to, unreservedly condemn such actions. But condemnation alone is not enough. We must all play our part in combating intolerance & racism, including anti-Semitism, wherever it rears its ugly head, and redouble our efforts to extirpate this cancer that afflicts almost every land and which, tragically, shows no sign of abating. For more than 40 years I have reported and observed the Middle East scene. As a young war-correspondent twenty-six years of age, I found myself in Israel in mid-May of 1967. I happened to be with David Ben-Gurion, former Prime Minister of Israel, interviewing him at dawn one morning in his suite at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem when -- as I recall about 6:50 am -- Kol Israel interrupted their programs to announce that President Nasser of Egypt had closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping -- cutting, at a stroke, Israel's oil lifeline. Ben-Gurion, with a gesture of the hand, ordered his assistant to switch off the radio and, shaking his great mane of white hair gravely, declared with sorrow: "This means war. I am very frightened. Not for Israel, for she will survive -- we cannot afford otherwise -- but for the younger generation. It is always the best of their generation who never return." Thereupon the great man led me out onto the balcony overlooking the Holy City of Jerusalem, where the first rays of the morning sun were striking the city's golden domes, cupolas and spires. Taking me by the arm, he proceeded to give me a succinct lesson in Jewish history: "Mr. Churchill before you, you have the City of David -- 3,000 years Jewish. But do you see the road that leads down the valley? Follow it and it will lead you to Hebron, the City of Abraham -- 4,000 years Jewish!" It was a magical moment and one that I shall always treasure. A week later, with Nasser making blood-curdling threats as to how he would wipe Israel off the face of the earth and drive the Jews into the sea, war preparations in Israel were in full swing. In Tel Aviv thousands of graves were being dug in the public parks in anticipation of large scale civilian casualties. Public appeals were made for blood, to which I, among thousands of others, responded. Among all, except the highest echelons of government and the military -- who, alone were privy to Israel's war-plan -- there was a deep-rooted fear that, with all the Arab nations mobilising against her, Israel might lose the war -- a prospect too terrible to contemplate. It took an Ezer Weizman, the most recent head of the Israeli Air Force, to be bullish about the situation as it presented itself in the first few days of June 1967, with the entire Arab world mobilising and, as they supposed, moving in for the kill. Well do I recall him telling me, over breakfast in the Tel Aviv Hilton with his gung-ho jocularity: 'The Arabs have surrounded us again -- poor bastards!' But, among the rank & file, there was deep anxiety, even fear. My Israeli reservist escorting officer, a lawyer in his mid-forties, recently married with a small daughter, told me in all earnestness that, in the event that Israel was being defeated, he would have no hesitation killing his wife and daughter, rather than let them fall in to the hands of the Arabs. It would indeed have been a second Masada. For my part, I found myself wondering what I -- a Goy and a Brit -- should do in that event, given that I was from a foreign land and had no direct involvement in the quarrels of the Middle East -- beyond a Grandfather who had been a signatory of the Balfour Declaration! Without hesitation, I concluded that I would grab whatever weapon might come into my hands and fight at the side of the Israelis. From that moment onwards, though I avow the right of the Palestinians to have their own independent state within the confines of Biblical Palestine, which has been their homeland over the centuries, I have counted myself a Zionist, firmly believing in the justice of the existence of the State of Israel. In 1973 my intelligence was no better than that of the Israeli Government and the Yom Kippur War found me a prisoner Westbound aboard the QE2 committed to a two-week lecture tour of the US. By the time I got back to Israel General Sharon was on the West side of the Suez Canal with the Egyptian Third Army in his power. I sent him an urgent message asking him to call. An hour later I was still waiting when I had to leave to have Dinner in a Palestinian fish restaurant in Jaffa with General Motti Hod, Commander of the Air Force in '67. I briefed the switchboard operators at the Tel Aviv Hilton to forward any telephone call to the restaurant. Half way through Dinner mein host, the Palestinian, called me to the phone. I went behind the bar & took the phone off the hook. A booming voice came on the line, causing me to hold the phone at arm's length: 'Winston, This is Arik!' adding with overtones of Scipio Africanus 'Arik from Africa! Winston, We have Peace! A piece of Egypt, a piece of Lebanon, a piece of Syria & a piece of Jordan!' There you have it: the Sharon vision of Peace! There is no denying that he was God's gift to journalists! Turning to the situation in the Middle East today, the recent declaration by the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that the Holocaust never happened, and that Israel is a 'tumour' to be 'wiped off the map', can only be a matter of the gravest concern, linked as it is with his decision to remove the UN seals from Iran's nuclear research facilities and press ahead with its programme to develop nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Of course there is no shortage of people on hand to reassure us that the Iranian President does not really mean what he says -- just as there were those around in the 1930's who made clear that, of course, Herr Hitler did not really mean what he had written in his book, Mein Kampf! Whether the government of Israel will buy such reassurance, only time will tell! But somehow, knowing Israel, I doubt it! It is by no means impossible that this reckless action by the Iranian President will provoke an Israeli, or even American, air-strike to take out Iran's budding nuclear capability, as the Israeli Air Force so brilliantly did in 1981 with Saddam's Osirak reactor, named after the Egyptian mythological God of Death. In such circumstances the political temperature in the Middle East would go stratospheric; Iran might sink a couple of super-tankers, closing the Straits of Hormuz and the price of oil could well go through $200 per barrel. That of course would be a huge inconvenience to people around the whole world and will predictably call down on Israel & the US a caterwaul of condemnation. But that might not be the worst of outcomes. The alternative -- too terrible to contemplate -- might be the destruction of the state of Israel & a second Holocaust! But, while facing realities however harsh, it is also important to use a phrase beloved of my Grandfather, to 'grasp the larger hope'. Out of the present seemingly bleak situation, it is by no means impossible that, in the coming weeks & months, the newly elected Hamas Government of Palestine may be forced to confront the reality of the permanence of the state of Israel and move to recognise its existence, within the pre-1967 boundaries, while abandoning its previous insistence on a 'Right of Return', for those Palestinians displaced in 1948. That would appear to be the wish of the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas and, were it to happen, the end of the 60-year war between Palestinians and Israelis over how to divide the Holy Land, could be in sight. What blessings would not flow from such a historic development, not just for the peoples of Israel and Palestine, but for the wider Middle East! Indeed nothing could do more to disarm the present worldwide hatred, presently directed not only against the state of Israel, but against the United States and her allies. I wish to congratulate the JNF of Australia on your important initiative to raise funds to relocate half a million Israelis from the narrow coastal strip adjacent to Tel Aviv, to the under populated region of the Negev. This is a project that is not only environmentally desirable but -- given the great vulnerability of Israel's densely concentrated population to a potential nuclear attack -- strategically sound. While hoping for the best, it always makes good sense to prepare for the worst. As you may imagine, I am deeply proud to be Winston Churchill's grandson and to have the immense privilege of bearing the name of the man who, more than any other individual, turned the tide of war in the greatest and most terrible conflict known to man. You may say I am biased -- which of course I am -- but I firmly believe that, but for Winston Churchill, Great Britain would have surrendered to Nazi Germany in that fateful Summer of 1940, when all effective resistance to the Nazi power in continental Europe was coming to an end. Though the situation seemed hopeless, Churchill, in the words of that great CBS Radio reporter, Edward R. Murrow -- made famous by President John F. Kennedy -- 'mobilised the English language and sent it into battle'. Telling his fellow countrymen that he had 'nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears & sweat,' he persuaded them to fight on for eighteen months alone, but for the strong, unstinting support of Australia, Canada and the other Dominions of the Crown. It would be wrong to say that Winston Churchill won the War, but what is true is that -- but for him -- the war would have been lost by default. It would have been impossible for America, when eventually she awoke from her reveries, to launch a D-Day style Liberation of Europe from more than 3,000 miles across the Atlantic. In such circumstances it is entirely possible that, to this day, the Nazi swastika would be flying over Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament and over all the capital cities of Europe, as far East as Moscow. The world would indeed be a very different place, and there would be many of us who would never have survived to see our children and our children's children. In 1993 I had the privilege of being invited to address a commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising at London University. Following my speech, a very beautiful lady of a certain age, approached me: 'Mr. Churchill, at the time of the Uprising, I was a girl of just 12. We had all been herded into the Ghetto -- supposedly for our safety. But then people all around us started to disappear, we knew not where -- we were all very frightened. We had one of the few radios in the Ghetto and, whenever your Grandfather was due to broadcast on the BBC, my family & our friends would gather round. I could not understand English, but I knew that if I and my family had any hope of coming through this war alive, it depended upon that one, strong, unseen voice. We were all taken to Treblinka and then to Bergen Belsen. I was the only member of my family to survive. I was liberated by British forces in 1945 -- in fact by the gentleman you see at my side, who is today my husband!' It was a profoundly proud, yet humbling, moment! I had some idea how much my Grandfather meant to the Brits, and even to the Americans but, until that moment, I had no understanding of just how much he meant to those living in Occupied Europe, most especially to the Jews. But today a new challenge confronts us: Extremist Islam has declared war on the rest of the world, as we see from their ruthless attacks -- overwhelmingly targeted at innocent civilians -- with the outrage of Nine-Eleven, the bombings in Madrid, in Bali, in London and, most recently, in Jordan. Meanwhile the Fundamentalists are doing all in their power to mobilise against us the large Muslim communities living in our midst. There today are an estimated 7M Muslims in North America; nearly half a million in Australia, while in the European Union, the Moslem community is estimated at 20M, including nearly 2M in Britain. The scale of the problem confronting Europe today is epitomised by France, which has a Muslim community of some 6M, or 10% of its population. But, taking the population aged 20 and below, that figure rockets to 30%, such is the birth rate among the immigrant communities. In other words, within one further generation, France will have become an Islamic country -- a truly awesome prospect. It is clear that the writing is on the wall for Judeo-Christian Europe, as we have known it over the past 2,000 years. Why are the alarm-bells not ringing? Can it be that we would sooner commit national suicide than risk being labelled 'politically incorrect'? Can anyone imagine a comparable situation in reverse being tolerated in Saudi Arabia? The answer is so self-evident, it needs no response. As if that were not enough, the United States is pressuring the EU to grant Turkey admission to the European Union -- something that, at a stroke, would cause the Moslem population of Europe to soar from 20 to 100M. I have a high regard for the Turks, who have long been loyal members of NATO, but that would be an act of consummate folly. It is high time someone summoned up the courage to tell Washington to mind its own business. It is deeply worrying the extent to which -- unlike all other categories of immigrants -- the Islamic communities are reluctant to bond with their fellow countrymen & women, while harbouring a separate, indeed alien agenda of their own. While the US imports its bombers from Saudi Arabia, and Spain from North Africa, it is a deeply disturbing feature of the 7/7 attacks on London that our bombers were home-grown -- a fact that should cause us to ponder, swift & hard, just where we have gone wrong. America & Britain are now experiencing what Israel has lived with for years: the curse of the suicide bomber. While on Australian soil, I wish to pay tribute to your Prime Minister, John Howard. Unique among Western leaders, he has had the courage to stand up for those values -- freedom, democracy, liberalism & tolerance -- that inspire our Western democracies, bluntly endorsing the view that those who would prefer to live under Sharia law, rather than Parliamentary law, should pack their bags & go. That said, with large Islamic communities already established in each of our countries, it is vital that we recognise that the majority of Muslims in our midst are loyal, law-abiding citizens and we must ensure that -- in our pursuit of the men & women of terror -- we do not alienate the Muslim community as a whole, for their help is vital if we are, eventually, to excise this cancer of terrorism in their midst. Intriguingly the dangers of extremist Islam were foreseen by Winston Churchill all of 85 years ago, as I discovered to my amazement, while compiling my most recent book NEVER GIVE IN! The Best of Winston Churchill's Speeches. Churchill is of course well known for his gift of prescience and, specifically, for being the first to warn of the menace of Hitler & Nazism as early as 1932, and of the Soviet threat in his famous Iron Curtain speech of 1946 in Fulton, Mo. But how many know that he also warned the world of the dangers of Islamic Fundamentalism? I certainly did not! On 14 June 1921, hard on the heels of the Cairo Conference, at which he presided over the re-shaping of the Middle East, including the creation of modern day Iraq, he warned the House of Commons: 'A large number of [Saudi Arabia's King] Bin Saud's followers belong to the Wahabi sect, a form of Mohammedanism which bears, roughly speaking, the same relationship to orthodox Islam as the most militant form of Calvinism would have borne to Rome in the fiercest times of [Europe's] religious wars. The Wahabis profess a life of exceeding austerity, and what they practice themselves they rigorously enforce on others. They hold it as an article of duty, as well as of faith, to kill all who do not share their opinions and to make slaves of their wives and children. Women have been put to death in Wahabi villages for simply appearing in the streets. It is a penal offence to wear a silk garment. Men have been killed for smoking a cigarette and, as for the crime of alcohol, the most energetic supporter of the temperance cause in this country falls far behind them. Austere, intolerant, well-armed, and blood-thirsty, in their own regions the Wahabis are a distinct factor which must be taken into account, and they have been, and still are, very dangerous to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina?.. In Churchill's day, of course, the viciousness and cruelty of the Wahabis was confined to the Saudi Arabia peninsula, and their atrocities were directed exclusively against their fellow Muslims, whom they held to be heretics for not adhering to the Wahabi creed -- but not anymore. Today the combination of the oil wealth of Saudi Arabia and the supine weakness of the Saudi royal family which -- as the price for not having their own behaviour subjected to scrutiny and public criticism by these austere, extremist clerics -- has bank-rolled the Wahabi fundamentalist movement, and given these fanatical zealots a global reach to their vicious creed of hatred and extremism. The consequence has been that the Wahabis have been able to export their exceptionally intolerant brand of Islamic fundamentalism from Mauritania and Morocco on Africa's Atlantic shores, through more than two dozen countries including Bosnia, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Middle East, to as far afield as the Philippines and East Timor in the Pacific. This is the stark challenge that today confronts the Western world and I fear it will be with us, not just for a matter of years, but perhaps even for generations. Whether the decision to invade Iraq was right or wrong, wise or foolish, is immaterial. The reality is that Iraq today is the epicentre of the Islamic militants' assault on the West. They are determined that democracy shall not succeed in Iraq. For our part, we cannot allow it to fail. Even before the recent serious developments in Iran, siren voices could be heard on Capitol Hill, raising the cry: 'Bring the Boys home!' I tell you: nothing could be more disastrous than if, at this juncture, the United States were to cut and run. It would, at a stroke, undermine those forces of moderation we are seeking to establish in power, betray our troops as they fight a difficult, but necessary, battle, and break faith with our gallant soldiers who have sacrificed their lives to establish a free Iraq. Gravest of all, we should be handing a victory of gigantic proportions to our sworn enemies. Let no one imagine that by pulling out of Iraq, the threat will simply evaporate. On the contrary, it will redouble, it will come closer to home and our enemies will have established in Iraq the very base that, by our defeat of the Taliban, we have denied them in Afghanistan. We shall see a desperately weakened United States, with its armed forces undermined and demoralised, increasingly at the mercy of our terrorist enemies. Precipitate withdrawal is the counsel of defeatism and cowardice which, if it holds sway, will immeasurably increase the dangers that today confront, not just America, but the entire Western world. It is something for which we shall pay a terrible price in the years ahead. When great nations go to war -- and they should do so only as a last resort -- they must expect to suffer grievous losses and must commit to war with an unconquerable resolve to secure victory. In Iraq the United States has lost some 2,500 men and women, Britain 111. Compare that to the first day of the Battle of the Somme -- 1 July 1916 -- when the British Army in a single day, nay, before breakfast, lost 55,000 men killed, wounded or missing in action. Did we talk of quitting? Did we, heck! What has happened to the mighty United States? Is she going soft? Are the elected representatives of the American people really ready to surrender to those who threaten their homeland -- indeed their civilian population -- with death and destruction? I pray that they are not, and I call to mind the words of my Grandfather, addressing the Canadian Parliament on New Year's Day 1941, in which -- referring to the British nation dwelling around the globe, but it applies equally to our American cousins today -- he declared: 'We are a tough & hardy people! We have not travelled across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains & across the prairies, because we're made of sugar candy!' In conclusion, I would remind you all of Winston Churchill's words to the House of Commons on becoming Prime Minister in May 1940, which applies every bit as much to the situation that confronts us today. You ask: What is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is Victory. Victory at all costs, Victory in spite of all terror. However long or hard the road may be; for without Victory there is no survival." Provided we have the courage to stay the course, I am convinced that we can and shall, in the end, prevail, both in Afghanistan & in Iraq. Any alternative is too terrible to contemplate. Let us fight the good fight -- and let us fight it together! How pleased my Grandfather would be to know that -- 40 years on from his death -- the Anglo-American alliance is still strong and that British, Australian & American soldiers tonight as we are gathered here, stand shoulder-to-shoulder in Iraq and in Afghanistan, confronting the peril of the hour! Long may we stand together! God bless Australia! And God bless both the State & the people of Israel! Contact Sandy Rosen-Hazen at sandy@israel.net |
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MAARIV EDITOR DENOUNCES NAZARETH JUDGE FOR HOLOCAUST REVISIONISM COMMENTS
Posted by Steven Plaut, June 26, 2006. |
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1. Ben Dror Yemini, the Deputy editor of Maariv, published the following column this past Friday in the weekend edition of the paper, June 23, 2006 (my translation). It concerns the Holocaust revisionist statements by the Arab woman judge, Reem Naddaf, in the Nazareth court verdict that ruled that illegal pro-terror activities by an anti-Israel extremist are protected speech, but criticism of those same illegal pro-terror activities is "slander". It is called "Judicial Autism". Here is the full text in translation: |
"Anyone today who 'dares' to recheck the events of the Holocaust and its scale, from any point of view, whether it be human, historic, scientific, political, or otherwise, immediately is turned into the target for attacks and accusations of being an anti-Semite and Holocaust Denier, worthy of being dubbed Judenrat or a Jew for Hitler. That sums up, albeit in a somewhat palliated manner, the position of the President of Iran, Ahmed Ahmadinejad, about to hold an assembly of Holocaust Deniers in Teheran. He is, as is well known, a stout defender of academic freedom of expression. Therefore groups of Holocaust Deniers, who "deviate from the known consensus", together with some others, will be assembling in Iran, and the 'truth' of the Holocaust Deniers will be published for all to see. Except that it was not Ahmadinejad who made those statements cited above! These were all statements that were written by a woman judge in Israel (Reem Naddaf of Nazareth court. SP), in her ruling in a libel suit between two academics. The rhetoric that justifies and enables hooligans and bigots to use "freedom of expression" and "academic freedom" in order to promote their agenda has arrived in Israel as well. It matters not at all which side is in the right in the specific court case. There was no justification for these pronouncements about "departures from the consensus" regarding the Holocaust, in which Holocaust Deniers wash their filthy laundry, to make a determination. And lest we err, the woman judge adds for us that she is simply not aware that David Irving himself is a Holocaust Denier. She does not know that Irving was judged in Britain and was declared a Holocaust Denier and a liar. She does not know that this same Irving is now sitting in prison in Vienna for Holocaust Denial. This woman judge is traveling down the familiar path of phony "rights discourse". This is where automatic judgment is always relativistic, where it denies there is any reality at all, only "theories". Actually, most liberal freedoms are misused by fringe elements. In the USA, these include the Neo-Nazis marching through neighborhoods of Holocaust survivors in Skokie, and in Israel they include Kahanists who want to march through Umm al-Fahm, as well as extremist fanatics like Azmi Bishara who endorse "resistance". meaning terror. All this in the name of freedom of expression. In Europe, unlike Israel, a red line is being drawn. Hence political parties who oppose basic rights, such as freedom of speech and freedom to organize, are denied constitutional protections for their own rights, because these are rights that these groups would revoke if they were to take power in those countries. This is called "democracy defending itself". This is a worthy model for implementation in Israel. When it is so implemented, instead of liberal rights being the captives of people like Azmi Bishara and Baruch Marzel, those rights will be restored to their proper position. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist,
a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author
of "The Scout." He frequently comments -- both seriously and
satirically -- on Israeli politics and the left wing academic
community. His website address is
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WHAT IS CONSUL-GENERAL MEKEL THINKING?
Posted by AFSI, June 26, 2006. |
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Speaking from a place devoid of all authority, overstepping his role as Consul-General and exposing the fundamental weakness of Ehud Olmert's government, Aryeh Mekel seeks to silence American Jews who would criticize current Israeli policies of appeasement, abandonment and expulsion -- and all this in the name of honoring Israel's "democratic process." In a recent interview with the Jerusalem Post, Mr. Mekel said that; "American Jews largely support Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's realignment plan, and those who don't will be told to keep quiet so that the global Jewish community can maintain a united front." Is it the job of the Consul General to speak for American Jews? Is it his job to promote the opinions of those he declares the majority and silence those he pronounces the minority? Does his personal desire for a lemming like "united front" outweigh matters of Jewish survival? According to the Consul-General's own website, the role of the Consul General is quite limited. Its primary task being: "to promote the positive image of Israel in the media and the surrounding communities ..." By seeking to silence American Jews Mr. Mekel is way out of bounds and has seriously undermined his job of presenting Israel in a positive light. Perhaps he seeks to empower himself as the voice and censor of American Jewry -- thanks but no thanks. Mr. Mekel, take note. Americans across the political spectrum cherish free speech and the right of dissent as essential elements of democracy and disdain tactics that would impose silence. Mr. Mekel would do well to stick to the parameters of his job description that includes maintaining "mutually cooperative" relationships with Jewish organizations in America and refrain from delving into the politics of propping up a weak government that fears to have the inanity of its policies challenged. It is suspected that the same approach of silencing dissent will be taken with Christian Zionists who oppose Ehud Olmert's policies -- although not through Mekel. Those that would silence can be assured that such efforts will be rebuffed and that both the weakness of the government and its attitude towards free speech will not go unnoticed by the Christian community. If the present government of Israel were confident about its direction it would not fear dissent and seek to silence it. If it was a strong government, it would not attempt to intimidate those that oppose it from speaking out. This government is neither confident nor strong and Mr. Mekel's remarks are testimony to that. Those Americans who recognize the folly of appeasing terror are in the clear majority. They recognize that the war on Israel is part of the War on Terror and will not be silenced or cowed by a weak government in Israel that has embraced appeasement and worse. A few people may be intimidated and even a few organizations, but a lemming like "unity" in support for national suicide in response to an out of bounds request fro m Mekel? Not a chance. Barry Freedman is Executive Director of Americans For a Safe Israel/AFSI, a pro-active pro-Israel advocacy group. AFSI may be contacted by mail at 1623 Third Ave., Suite 205, New York, N.Y. 10128 (Tel: 212-828-2424; Fax: 212-828-1717); by email at afsi@rcn.com; or by accessing its website: www.afsi.org. |
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FABRICATING ISRAELI WAR CRIMES; ZARQAWI; CANADA STIRS ... SLEEPS;
WAR IS WAR BUT NOT TO MUSLIMS
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 26, 2006. |
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ASSESSING ZARQAWI'S DEMISE Zarqawi had become the most dangerous known jihad commander. He still fought, whereas bin Laden hid. He had gained expertise, which he passed on to others. An aggressive leader, he inspired masses and developed theories for extending jihad. Elminating him was a major wartime goal and victory. A year or two ago, when Israel became semi-aggressive in liquidating terrorist leaders, it sent most of the dwindling number of terrorist leaders into inactivity. If the US keeps up this similar instance of success, it would greatly reduce terrorism in Iraq. The NY Times emphasized that his death won't end terrorism; more terrorists will take his place. Since he was especially qualified, they won't replace him at his level of expertise for some time. He won't inspire so many people, any more. The Times is defeatist. Democrats were discovered discussing how to minimize acclaim for this victory, lest the Bush administration gain some credit with the public. That is unpatriotic partisanship. HOW TO MISLEAD ABOUT ALLEGED ISRAELI WAR CRIMES Although he cited his source accurately, Internet writer Serwad's source misleads by omission. The story is about the arrest warrant for an alleged war crime. The threat of arrest kept an Israeli officer, invited to England, from stepping out of his plane. Some European countries and the US allow their citizens to institute a government prosecution of a foreign national for an alleged war crime in a foreign country, none of it having any relevance to the prosecuting country. Several countries amended the law to require some connection to their countries. The officer had demolished houses in Gaza. The court, on accepting the case, had as its standards: (1) Supposed applicability under the Geneva Convention; (2) The act would be a crime, if proved; (3) The defendant's country doesn't review many such cases. Israel complains that singling out Israel makes it seem "a singularly unlawful state." What did the story omit? (1) The fact that the multi-national movement has gotten out of hand. It has been pre-empted by states and individuals, many being war criminals, themselves, or who are radicals hating the US and Israel. They seize upon this and other opportunities, originally meant to impose justice, to impose injustice upon scapegoat states. The story hints that some countries have repealed the broad sweep of the statute, because it is subject to abuse. These days, lawsuits are used censor and extort, rather than to resolve. (2) The Geneva Convention does not apply to Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. It applies only to sovereign territory, in an attempt to deter countries from absorbing other countries. (3) The merits of demolition are not discussed. Israel has done it for a small proportion of illegally built houses and houses, often abandoned and used for terrorism. This anti-terrorism is legitimate law-enforcement. (4) The phony self-righteous social conscience behind the lawsuit fails to object to Arab terrorism. CANADA STIRS, THEN RESUMES HIBERNATION Canada has the same unrealistic notion of itself as have some European countries. It is civilized and tolerant now (it once preferred Nazis to Jewish refugees). It supposes that all ethnic groups enjoy the tolerance, and repay it with loyalty. It does not realize that Islamic solidarity and bigotry rarely are penetrated by the best modern values. While the people slept in their cocoon of fantasy, the vigilant police uncovered a widespread domestic Islamic terrorist plot against the country. One official publicly described the plotters as of diverse backgrounds, but did not mention that all were Muslims (which is more relevant). The next day, the police chief bragged to Muslim leaders that officials did not mention the accused men's religion. And the raiders have undergone sensitivity training (as if they did something wrong). A Toronto imam called the arrests "an attack on the Muslim community" made "for the sake of pleasing George Bush." (Muslims concoct motives just to have something to say.) The imams urged academic study of how their youth got into terrorism. The plotters mostly were Canadian citizens, educated in Canadian public schools, but hear hate-speech from the imams. (The imams urge study to divert attention from their guilt.) Many Canadians still think they were attacked for some connection with the US, rather than for being a secular, liberal country. The national leadership, however, was the first to sever ties and funding for the Hamas regime, classified the Tamil Tigers as a terrorist organization, and went to Afghanistan to show support for the Canadian soldiers there (Adam Daifallah, NY Sun, 6/7, Op.-Ed.). WAR IS WAR, BUT NOT TO THE MUSLIMS. Israel raided and killed the former head of the P.A. Popular Resistance Committee, which has been committing much of the recent P.A. terrorism. The P.A. reacted by calling that liquidation of the Muslim war criminal itself a criminal act (IMRA, 6/8). There is no indication that the major media ever ask the Muslims what the other side in a war is supposed to do. PM OLMERT MEETS WITH KING OF JORDAN Oh how the two countries are cooperating in the endeavor to get a state for the P.A. Arabs. How appreciative Olmert is of Jordan's training Abbas' Presidential Guard (IMRA, 6/8). The Presidential Guard doubles as a terrorist organization. P.A. statehood would be at the expense of Jewish patrimony and security. The King must see Olmert as a fool. HAMAS TO INTEGRATE FORCES INTO P.A. POLICE With Egyptian mediation, Fatah and Hamas agreed to let thousands of Hamas men into the P.A. police (IMRA, 6/8). This is an important step in Hamas taking over the P.A.. Hamas will accumulate an army of the current 70,000 P.A. troops plus its own thousands plus the eight thousand that Abbas is adding to his Presidential Guard. The Quartet wanted amalgamation, without caring that it means combining terrorist forces ranged along Israel's flank. Do you think that Egypt and Russia won't show that army how to penetrate the flank in support of invaders that Israelis would be scrambling to assemble in time to block? ISRAELI MILITARY PURGE The Sharon-Olmert regimes have been purging the security agencies of brilliant thinkers who oppose unrequited concessions and retreats. Sharon dismissed three; Olmert has dismissed two more. Those leaders were responsible for new methods that the US and other militaries asked to be taught. In Israel, critical thinking is not wanted any more. The political echelon constantly makes grave strategic errors, for which brilliant military strategists have had to compensate. Now the military is going to be as witless as the politicians (IMRA, 6/9). Israeli leaders have over-sized egos and under-sized I.Q.s. ZARQAWI Zarqawi was the product of an assembly line producing terrorists. The US waits at the end of the assembly line to fight the troops that emerge. It should attack the brains behind the factory and shut down the assembly line. That means getting at the religious leaders and educators (as at al-Azhar U. in Cairo). Most Muslim governments make deals with those terrorist indoctrinators, rather than prosecute them. In the West, lobbyists and permissive welfare and citizenship systems protect Islamists. The prior two US presidents, senators, ex-officials, and lobbyists serve Muslim governments (Youssef Ibrahim, NY Sun, 6/9, p.6). So do many academicians and reporters. Many editors appease the Muslims. NY TIMES PROTECTS HAMAS' REPUTATION "Hamas had officially been abiding by an intermittent 16-month-old cease-fire," but now "Declares it will resume attacking Israel." So wrote Steven Erlanger, 6/10, A1). "Officially," yes. Unofficially, no. Hamas gave its rockets to other groups to fire. Some Hamas cells engaged in terrorism. A cease fire is a Muslim way of feigning moderation temporarily or of gaining a respite for rearming. The Times misleadingly protects the reputation of Hamas, which it calls militant rather than terrorist. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
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THE TUNNEL FIASCO
Posted by Naomi Ragen, June 26, 2006. |
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Friends, Could the tragic deaths of two soldiers and the kidnapping of a third have been avoided by better planning and technology? This article by Amir Oren says yes. "The IDF has two armies. There is one that fights day and night, to the best of its depleted ability; most of the time it succeeds, sometimes it fails. The second army works during office hours, from Sunday morning to Thursday afternoon, with no sense of urgency. The tunnels are being dug along the seam between the two armies." An article worth reading. My thanks to IMRA for posting.
It is entitled "Investigate the tunnel fiasco" and was written by
Amir Oren; it appeared in Haaretz Naomi |
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Two weeks ago officers from the Israel Defense Forces Engineering Corps knocked on the door of the Geophysics Institute which, among other work, researches subterranean phenomena related to security. The officers expressed concern at the possibility that in the area of the Sufa crossing between Israel and Gaza, tunnels are being dug from the Palestinian side in the direction of the border - both for immediate crossings into Israel and for future use. Experts at the institute were asked to assist in locating the tunnels, which Brigadier General Aviv Kochavi said the IDF had failed to find. The staff expressed an eagerness to help, but asked that an official request be made, as is customary. No such request arrived; instead a Palestinian commando attack took place yesterday there against IDF soldiers. The fiasco in the handling of the Gaza Strip tunnels cost the lives of two soldiers yesterday, the abduction of another and injuries to others, and has led to an escalation in ground warfare in the Rafah area. The responsibility of the Hamas government for these developments does not free Israel of the need for a detailed evaluation of the failings of the army and the Defense Ministry in the tunnels affair. The Defense Research and Development Administration, the Ground Forces Command, the Southern Command, the Defense Ministry's administration and its minister, the General Staff - all share the responsibility, more or less, directly or indirectly. Only an authorized and independent investigation can determine the extent of that responsibility. A year and a half ago, following repeated incidents along the Philadelphi Route that claimed many lives, then chief of staff Moshe Ya'alon appointed a special advisor on the issue of tunneling, Colonel (res.) Yossi Langotsky, a geologist and a veteran of special operations with experience dealing with technologies used by the Intelligence Corps. Langotsky investigated and presented Ya'alon with a very critical report on various aspects of the tunnels. He feared that just as in the case of the downing of the Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie - which he himself had warned about as one of the authors of a report on aviation security during the 1980s - his findings would once again be ignored. The response from the upper echelons of the defense establishment to Langotsky's report was quick and to the point: It was directed not against the tunnels, or those responsible for the failings, but against the geologist himself. His assistance was apparently unwelcome, and those harmed by Langotsky's findings blamed him for being motivated by personal interests. Then defense minister Shaul Mofaz, who boasted in the Knesset about the successes in coping with the tunnel phenomenon, avoided a meeting with Langotsky. This was also the response of all the generals who were dealing with the issue - with the exception of Major General Benny Gantz who, as head of Northern Command, was worried that the Hezbollah was also secretly digging tunnels. What Gantz actually has done with respect to this problem, in his current role as head of the Ground Forces Command, which also includes the Engineering Corps, is something that needs to be clarified in the investigation. The well-known method that brands a person who sounds the alarm as a fanatic who should be ignored, worked. The handling of the tunnels situation moved along slowly, and an official announcement declared it a problem with no solution. The Palestinians were convinced - and continued to dig. If Israel is a fenced-in state, they can try to pass over and under the fence: bypassing it from above with ballistic weapons and from below by using tunnels. The IDF has two armies. There is one that fights day and night, to the best of its depleted ability; most of the time it succeeds, sometimes it fails. The second army works during office hours, from Sunday morning to Thursday afternoon, with no sense of urgency. The tunnels are being dug along the seam between the two armies. If an investigative committee headed by retired judge Vardi Zeiler is set up to probe ties between police officers and criminals, and if to prove the IDF's innocence in the killing of Palestinians on a Gaza beach, a major general is appointed to head an inquiry - surely a public commission is necessary to probe the tunnels fiasco. This year the state comptroller already examined the tunnels issue and focused on various aspects of development, intelligence and operations; a bleak draft of the findings is waiting for answers from those under scrutiny. During the past two years senior officials in the defense establishment have been involved in failures, and the system will find it difficult to rise above itself and act objectively against itself and its own. Only external elements, perhaps the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, have the power to appoint a "Zeiler equivalent," who will investigate the failures and help prevent the next foul-up. Naomi Ragen is an American-born novelist and journalist who lives in Jerusalem. She can be contacted at www.naomiragen.com, where you can subscribe to her newsletter. |
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FREEING THIS SOLDIER AND PROTECTING OTHERS
Posted by Professor Eugene Narrett, June 26, 2006. |
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Disengagement strikes again. The brilliance of Peres and his golem again has been shown. Expel the Jews from their homes, destroy them and give the remains to the mortal enemies of the Jewish people and the state of Israel and the sharks will be sated and Israel will be right to strike at any subsequent attacks. Lies, lies, and just another internationalist ploy to shrink Israel to a bite-size nugget for global jihad. And so rockets rain on Sderot and other west Negev towns, terrorists infiltrate in increasing numbers, more lethal versions of the fedayeen from the 1950s streaming out of the "Gaza Strip" until Israel quited them by conquering the Sinai in October 1956. But the globalist left pursues its made dream and life grows worse and worse. Soldier Gilad Shalit has been captured by savages whose penchant for kidnapping and murdering Jews is a matter of record. His situation focuses the principle issues of the entire situation with Israel's Arab enemies, the Jew haters. How to free him in a way that addresses the fundamental problems of the matzav? 1) Islam is the enemy of the Jewish people; their spokesmen remind us of this daily. Their people put into power vicious anti-Semites akin to Nazis. Somehow, those with power in Israel must recognize that these mortal enemies are blatantly at war with the Jewish people, indeed, that they intend to exterminate the Jews and to fight the war that is and has been going on since the first rocket or bullet was shot into pre-1967 Israel. The enemy must be crushed or they will crush the Jews. 2) Freeing the soldier must be done in a way that decisively deters a repetition of this heinous and familiar scenario. Here is the way to proceed: issue an ultimatum, public and private to the leaders of the enemy groups stating that they will be executed if the soldier is not released by noon tomorrow. Make it clear that this includes the entire Hamas government. Let the message be consistent, firm, and terse. Let them see signs of the death hanging over their heads and of the destruction of their entire enterprise and its boasts, its dail humiliation of Israel and the Jews. They will not murder this youth; they want to win, not die. The leaders of media darlings, cowards. If he is not freed and back in Israel by noon, by 12:30 massive attacks on Hamas and on many kinds of targets throughout Gaza and in 'Area A,' Ramallah, Jenin, Hebron, and more will be hit in a way that will leave a lasting impression. Worst case scenario: the maniacs murder the soldier, which they well may do anyway as abundant precedents have shown, and they suffer a major defeat and reduction toward nil of their ability to ever harm any Jew again. Best case scenario: they release the soldier and after the next rocket that leaves an Arab area and lands in any Jewish area the IDF does what it is trained to do and inflicts a hellacious pounding on the jihadists and the mobs that turn out to cheer their threats against Jews. Result the same: deterrence for a lifetime and an enormous reduction of islamic ability or desire to raise a hand against Jews. Let them know Jewish life and blood is precious and any attempts against it will be met with overwhelming force, storm and fury. There will be no more kidnappings and Israel will settle in its place. Professor Eugene Narrett's new book, Israel and The Endtimes is now
available at this web site:
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IDF INTELLIGENCE CHIEF: WITHDRAWAL INCREASED EXISTENTIAL THREATS
Posted by Jacob Benesch, June 26, 2006. |
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IDF Intelligence Chief Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin recently declared that Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza has increased the number of strategic threats to Israel's existence. Yadlin is only the latest important military and defense figure to speak about Israel's deteriorating strategic environment. Yadlin was a general in the Israeli Air Force and currently heads IDF Military Intelligence. Speaking at Haifa University's National Strategic Center on June 20th, Yadlin presented several factors that have contributed to Israel's deteriorating position in the eyes of the world. The main factor, he said, was the Hamas victory in the PA elections, after convincing the Palestinian people that their terrorist actions against Israel have been successful. In addition, Hamas forced Israel into making concessions and unilaterally withdrawing from Gush Katif. Yadlin said that Hizbullah's Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah "was the first to claim that by military force alone he would make Israel retreat from south Lebanon, with no diplomatic compromise. This trend was positively reinforced by Israel's Disengagement from the Gaza Strip." Former Defense Minister Moshe Arens has also come out vocally against the withdrawal, saying that Israel must reoccupy Gaza as the only way to prevent the continuation of rocket attacks on towns and cities. Former IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Moshe Yaalon has repeatedly said that the path of unilateral concessions and the assisting of a Hamas-controlled government will lead to a costly war. International Jihadist Movements such as Al-Qaeda have put Israel in the spotlight, Yadlin explained, adding that recent activities emanating from Osama Bin Laden's terrorist network's continue to focus on Israel and the Middle East. "In the meantime," he said, "it has had a notable influence on the surroundings, such as terror attacks in Taba, rocket fire from Aqaba, and fire on Lebanon - and not on Israel itself." Meanwhile, the intelligence chief added, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continues to research and develop nuclear technology. Yadlin noted that the development of nuclear technology was a chief reason behind the turnaround from the positive atmosphere in Israel's strategic environment from April 2002-August 2005. His election to power in June 2005 has also contributed to this change. "General Yadlin's analysis powerfully underscores the fact that strategic threats to Israel are worsening in part on of policies like that of further unilateral withdrawals now being pursued by the Olmert government," said Zionist Organization of America's National Chairman Michael Goldblatt in a statement distributed together with a transcript of Yadlin's words. "We urge the Olmert government again to reconsider urgently the path it is proposing to take." This article appeared in Arutz-Sheva today and is archived at
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JEWISH LEMMINGS HAVE THEIR DAY
Posted by Fern Sidman, June 25, 2006. |
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If the Jewish people would ever establish a national day of celebration and glorification of the victories of those amongst them who can be defined as "lemmings", today would be that day. It has been reported by Arutz Sheva (6/23/06) that, "Members of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' personal guard, "Force 17", used Israel's weapons to shoot Israelis this week, according to Israeli security and PA terrorist sources. Israel is the supplier of the weapons used in the gunfire that killed one Israeli and wounded several others, according to an interview written by journalist Aaron Klein and released Friday by WorldNetDaily. Klein quoted Abu Yousuf, a senior member of Force 17, who like many other guards is a member of the Al-Aksa Martyrs' Brigades terror group." The report goes on to say, "Olmert's administration decided to transfer the U.S.-manufactured weapons to Abbas' guard troops in a bid to shore up his ability to protect himself in the fight against the terror group Hamas for control of PA security forces. The recent shipment included 3,000 M-16 automatic machine guns and one million rounds of ammunition. Abu Yousuf said bluntly that the weapons will be used to shoot Jews, and added that the terror organization may share the weaponry with Hamas as well, if its 3,000-member militia is absorbed into the general PA police force. "These weapons will not be used in an internal war but against Israelis," Yousuf told Klein. He added as far as his group was concerned, Israel transferred the weapons to his Force 17 unit "for its own political purposes. We are not concerned with the reasons. The weapons will not be used against our brothers, only [against] Israelis." And if this news doesn't warm the hearts of the global community of Jewish lemmings, then perhaps the following will make great fodder for celebration. According to a report in The Jerusalem Post (6/25/06), "The Aksa Martyrs Brigades announced on Sunday that its members have succeeded in manufacturing chemical and biological weapons. In a leaflet distributed in the Gaza Strip, the group, which belongs to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah Party, said the weapons were the result of a three-year effort. According to the statement, the first of its kind, the group has managed to manufacture and develop at least 20 different types of biological and chemical weapons. The group said its members would not hesitate to add the new weapons to Kassam rockets that are being fired at Israeli communities almost every day. It also threatened to use the weapons against IDF soldiers if Israel carried out its threats to invade the Gaza Strip. "We want to tell [Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert and [Defense Minister Amir] Peretz that your threats don't frighten us," the leaflet said." And while all this is happening, ynetnews.com (6/24/06) is reporting that PA President Mahmoud Abbas, the good friend and ally of the Jewish lemmings, is pressing US Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice to intervene on behalf of the Palestinians to get Israel to stop launching air strikes in the Gaza Strip. According to their report, "Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has urged US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to press Israel to stop escalating tensions, Abbas' office said Saturday. In the telephone conversation Friday, Abbas called for US intervention on behalf of the Palestinians to get Israel to stop launching airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rdeneh said." There is no doubt or question that euphoria, ecstasy and unbridled joy is filling the hearts and souls of the Jewish lemmings. They can bask in their efforts to secure a national suicide of the State of Israel and of the Jewish people. They can reap great reward and benefit from these latest news developments. The Jewish lemmings are a clever bunch and they are led by their appointed leader, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. While the world is focused on the threat of Hamas and their promises to destroy the Jewish State, the lemmings ingeniously devised a plan to help "our friends," Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority. They have led us to believe that Abbas and his Fatah party are trying to quell Hamas' terrorist activities aimed at Israel. They have succeeded in convincing those who desperately want "peace" that the way to go is to support those Arabs who define themselves as "moderate" and can be reasoned with. Yes, the lemmings are great at public relations and know how to manipulate the minds of the people. The lemmings know the truth and are exploiting it for their ulitmate goal of expeditously destroying themselves. The Jewish lemmings know the truth about the background of Mahmoud Abbas. They know he is a terrorist mastermind, but they couch their rhetoric in the most palatable terms for the consumption of the masses. Quoting from an article written by this author in May of 2003 entitled "A Tale of Two Frauds", subsequent to the election of Mahmoud Abbas, a/k/a Abu Mazen, the following information came to light, "The Israeli civil rights group Shurat Hadin has announced a campaign to convince US and German law enforcement agencies to open an investigation into Mahmoud Abbas, a/k/a Abu Mazen in the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, Germany. On September 5, 1972, a squad of heavily armed Palestinian terrorists attacked the dormitories housing the Israeli Olympic team and murdered a coach and weightlifter David Berger, who was an American citizen. The terrorists then took nine Israeli athletes hostage. While the terrorists and their hostages were transported to the airport, the German police botched a rescue attempt and all nine of the athletes were murdered. The director of Shurat Hadin, attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, sent letters this week to US President George W. Bush and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder containing new information indicating that Abu Mazen provided financing to the PLO's Black September terrorist group, in order to carry out the notorious terrorist attack at the 1972 Olympic Games. While recent newsmedia profiles of Abu Mazen have accentuated his alleged "terrorism-free" personal history, the Shurat Hadin charges that in 1972, Abu Mazen, then a high ranking PLO official, provided financing for the terrorist attacks being perpetuated by Yassir Arafat's PLO faction Fatah under the nom de guerre Black September. Shurat Hadin is basing its information on published statements by the terrorist who masterminded the Munich attack, Mohammed Daoud Oudeh ("Abu Daoud"). In his French-language autobiography, Palestine: From Jerusalem to Munich, Abu Daoud describes the role of Abu Mazen in providing the funds to carry out the Black September Olympic attack. Furthermore, in an interview with journalist Don Yaeger of Sports Illustrated Magazine in August 2002, Abu Daoud reiterated his charges that Abu Mazen supplied the money for the deadly attack. In his memoir Abu Daoud states: "After Oslo in 1993, Abu Mazen went to the White House Rose Garden for a photo op with Arafat, President Bill Clinton and Israel's Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. ..." "Do you think that ... would have been possible if the Israelis had known that Abu Mazen was the financier of our operation?" Abu Daoud writes. "I doubt it." Today, the Bush Administration seeks a Palestinian negotiating partner "uncompromised by terror," yet last year Abu Mazen met in Washington with Secretary of State Colin Powell." Abu Daoud's allegations have been confirmed by sources within the Palestinian Authority, according to Shurat Hadin. Attorney Darshan-Leitner's letter to President Bush states: "Under your leadership the United States has declared that it will no longer maintain contacts with those tainted by terrorist pasts. It appears that the new Palestinian leader, on whom the United States and Israel are now pinning their hopes, was also involved in murderous attacks perpetrated by the PLO's Black September. If proven true, Abu Mazen's role in the brutal killing of the Israeli athletes and American citizen David Berger must preclude his involvement in the negotiations between the United States, Israel and her Arab neighbors." Both Germany and Israel still have the legal jurisdiction to prosecute those involved in the Munich Olympic killings." Mahmoud Abbas, Fatah and the PA are no different than Hamas. They share one goal and that is the eradication and destruction of the State of Israel and of the Jewish people. Terrorists don't change their stripes. Once a terrorist, always a terrorist. While the world and the media are quite adept is whitewashing the terrorist past of those they seek to transform into legitimate statesmen who are dedicated to "'peace", we need only look to Yasir Arafat and his ilk to see that this kind of propaganda is a thinly veiled attempt to deceive the public. And the top brass at the Jewish lemmings' headquarters know the truth as does their rank and file membership. And to those Jews who are not lemmings, to those Jews who respect the sanctity of Jewish lives and are dedicated to the preservation and survival of Israel and it's people, now is the time to rain on the parade of victory that the Jewish lemmings are enjoying. Now is the time to exude Jewish pride, power, strength, courage and commitment to their convictions. Now is the time to proclaim to the Jewish lemmings that their ill conceived plans for national suicide will be thwarted (with G-d's help) by those who believe in life, justice and righteousness. And to those who believe in the laws of the Almighty G-d of Israel and whose lives are committed to practicing His commandments and whose lives are committed to adhering to the values of Hashem's Torah, then now is the time to end the "party" for the Jewish lemmings. Now is the time to raise our collective voices in prayer to the G-d of Israel and plead for His mercy and compassion and now is the time to ask for the strength and temerity to expose the lies and corruption of the Jewish lemmings. Contact Fern Sidman at ariellaH@aol.com |
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THE ENTIRE LAND IS A "BORDER"
Posted by Professor Eugene E. Narrett, June 25, 2006. |
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The failure and bad faith of Israel's ruling elites since the late 1920s, the pre-state days, the days when the Histadrut - Bund formulated havlaga [Jewish self-restraint in response to Arab attacks] led to the peace processes that claimed the lives of two more Jews today near the abandoned lands of GK. Did we write 'bad faith'? Say rather, loss of faith because the failure to embrace the birthright, violently overt since the sinking of the Altalena has led directly to the relentless push of the powers to keep Jews from returning to, -- or remaining in -- the Jewish heartland and holy sites. One result of this terrible failure, the modern sin of the spies who are unable to blend gevura with chessed and thus put Jewish life always at risk, is that all of Israel has the status of a "border." In most respects this is terrible but the Torah and halacha are wisdom and the status of a border has a saving grace built into its strictures. The sages recognized that border regions are particularly vulnerable to the attacks that the nation's will never cease to make till Israel is settled completely in its place. Rav Josef Caro summed up their wisdom when he specified in the Shulchan Aruch that when an enemy attacks, or even prepares to attack even a border region of Israel then Jews are obliged to "kill them first," and that even if it is Shabbat they are to carry off the would-be assailants weapons and goods. Okay; all Israel today has the status of a border. Israel is surrounded and infested by Hamas and supporters of Hamas, the "Palestinian" population. The silver lining of this terrible situation rests in Israel's choosing to follow the explicit and practical point of the law: "kill them first" before they murder any more Jews or capture them as happened today. Whether this saving stricture is followed out of self-respect, bitterness, fear or various political or strategic motives, JUST DO IT. Avenge the spilling of Jewish blood on the entire enemy nation and thereby deter the spilling of more blood and advance the day when there will be peace. Professor Eugene Narrett's new book, Israel and The Endtimes is now
available at this web site:
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US OFFICIAL UNDER FIRE OVER SAUDI FLAP
Posted by Michael Freund, June 25, 2006. |
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In the wake of a report in last week's Jerusalem Post, an influential US congressman has sent a letter to the United States Trade Representative (USTR) pressing her to explain her defense of Saudi Arabia's record on the Arab boycott of Israel, after Riyadh's envoy to Washington admitted that the embargo remains in place. Florida Democrat Rep. Robert Wexler wrote to USTR Susan Schwab after reading an exclusive report in the Post on comments made by Saudi Ambassador to the US Prince Turki al-Faisal. Speaking at a June 19 "policy lunch" at the Brookings Institution, al-Faisal acknowledged that his country continued to bar Israeli-made goods from entering the kingdom, saying that it was "an issue of national sovereignty," according to a transcript of his remarks obtained by the Post. He added that US officials had been "informed" of the continuation of the boycott, an assertion which contradicted previous public statements made by the USTR, including as recently as last month. In May, Schwab told members of the US Senate Finance Committee at her nomination hearings that reports that the Saudis were violating their pledge to dismantle the anti-Israel boycott were "incorrect". She insisted that her office had received "assurances" from the Saudis that they were no longer enforcing the boycott. In a press release issued last year, then-USTR Rob Portman said, "Saudi Arabia is legally obligated to provide most-favored-nation treatment to all WTO Members, including Israel." The Bush administration conditioned Saudi Arabia's entry into the World Trade Organization on its removal of the boycott, and the Saudis were allowed to join the group in December only after pledging to do so. The WTO, which aims to promote free trade, prohibits members from engaging in discriminatory practices such as boycotts or embargoes. In the letter to Schwab, Rep. Wexler wrote, "Ambassador Al-Faisal's assertion that Saudi Arabia continues to enforce the primary boycott of Israel stands in stark violation of its commitments under the WTO." The envoy's remarks, Wexler noted, "seemingly contradict former representative Portman's claims and, to my knowledge, contradict all other public statements on this issue made by USTR." "Ambassador Schwab," he wrote, "it is clear that either the Saudi government is acting duplicitously or there is a misunderstanding between Congress and the USTR." "At this juncture," the letter concludes, "I respectfully request that you explain to what extent - if at all - USTR was made aware of Saudi Arabia's ongoing enforcement of the Arab League boycott of Israel, and please explain the response of USTR to the aforementioned Saudi claims." The Saudi ambassador's admission that his country continues to enforce the boycott confirmed reports that first appeared in the Post over the past few months. As the paper first reported in March, the Saudis played host to a major international conference aimed at intensifying the anti-Israel boycott. In May, a Saudi delegation took part in a meeting of the Arab League's boycott office in Damascus, and Saudi customs officials contacted by the Post said Israeli-made goods were barred from entering. In an interview with the Post last week, Wexler said, "Saudi Arabia is violating its commitments to the US, and the Bush administration needs to confront them on this... if the Saudis are being duplicitous," he warned, "there need to be consequences." Michael Freund served as an adviser to former
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. This article appeared today in the
Jerusalem Post |
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NOTHING LEFT TO SAY
Posted by Naomi Ragen, June 25, 2006. |
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As a direct result of the destruction of the communities of Gush Katif, terrorists are now free to shoot rockets, plant land mines, and dig tunnels all over Gaza. No one takes responsibility for the attacks. And if you try to fight back, you find yourself blowing up civilians because terrorists hide behind the innocent. Today, nine terrorists infiltrated Israel with machine guns, rockets, and suicide belts. They killed two soldiers: Chanan Barak and Pavel Slotzker, They also kidnapped Gilad Shalit and injured four other soldiers. Some terrorists were killed. Others escaped back through the tunnels to Gaza. Chanan, who lived in Arad, was "the wisest, strongest man I knew," a friend said. He would have been 21 in August. Pavel, who was planning to study medicine when he finished his tour of duty, was from Dimona. He was "big and beautiful," his mother said. He was twenty. Gilad Shalit, who has been in the army 11 months, is 19. His family lives in the Western Galilee. I cannot imagine what they are going through. The horror of waiting, the search for information. May God return him safely home. I have been writing much less of late. Not because nothing is happening but because there is nothing left to say. How many times can you write that Israel's leaders are weak and deluded? And why should anyone care given their empowerment through a free and democratic election? How many times can you say the obvious, that the Arabs have a single agenda, to wipe us off the map? No one even denies it anymore, not even the Leftists. How many times can you say: We said this would be the result of the retreat from Gaza, more murder, more mayhem, not a saving of lives, but a horrible security risk that would endanger our soldiers most of all? And who doubts it now anyway? Like the collapse of the Oslo Accords, which sold a bill of goods to the gullible, no one cared, or took responsibility, or paid the price for the death of thousands of Israelis. And so it will be this time. Those who will pay the price will be the wise and the strong, the beautiful and the intelligent, who stand under orders at our borders while Mr.Olmert and Mr.Peretz are busy with their photo ops, smiling for the foreign press, shaking hands, and kissing whatever part of the enemy is available. "Put not your faith in princes," the Psalmist writes. Like the Hebrews facing the sea with the Egyptians massing at their backs, we await the future hoping for miracles, even as we mourn the unbearable reality of all our present. Naomi Naomi Ragen is an American-born novelist and journalist who lives in Jerusalem. She can be contacted at www.naomiragen.com, where you can subscribe to her newsletter. |
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THE RAT TRAP, and the Dumb Cats...
Posted by Professor Eugene E. Narrett, June 25, 2006. |
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Assume the implausible, -- that there was a self-respecting, self-preserving, redemptive aspect of the expulsion of Jews from Gush Katif and northern Samaria. The assumption is based on the long known and daily reiterated facts and goals of jihadist behavior. In regard to the gerush from GK specifically this means that the jihadists who had rained rockets onto Negev towns near GK and who had initiated many murder missions from within Arab areas of Gaza would continue to do so when and if the Jews were removed. And lo, it has come to pass. It also was predictable (and predicted by many, in the IDF, GSS and lay commentators) that additional terrorists and jihadist groups would flock into all areas of the "Gaza strip" when and if the Jews and the IDF exited and that there would be, consequently, an exponential increase in jihadist attacks and attempted attacks on Jews in Israel and on other peoples. And lo, it has come to pass. Assuming there was some rhyme or reason to the gerush, that it was some kind of bizarre, self-flagellating tactic it could only be that once the inevitable concentration of terrorists and their infrastructure into the area occurred, with the resultant increase in murderous attacks that then the IDF and IAF would sweep through the area like a sharp threshing tool of many blades and crush the enemy in their entirety, pulverize them and sweep them all like chaff into the Sinai and back toward Egypt. But no; while the IDF top brass reportedly pleads with Walmartz for significant preemptive measures every single response is vetoed by the political echelon. And this is done even though what needs no explaining is explained in detail: that the meager response of targeted missiles from helicopters is not only inadequate to stop the Arab war against Israel but that it carries a much higher probability of killing civilians and therefore bringing world diplomatic and media opprobrium on Israel. Three obvious comments: this reminds us that, 1) the official organs of the world powers are outraged when Jews respond physically to murderous attacks against them ('just shut up and get in the cattle car'), and 2) that Walmartz wants Israel to pursue a policy that not only is ineffective as deterrence but that is guaranteed to increase 'world' criticism of Israel and, thus, pressures on Israel to atone by making further unilateral concessions, -- returning more Jewish land to Arabs to create a fake state for a fake people. These points demonstrate the degree to which, 3) Walmartz is a tool of the State Department, Brussels, the Davos Group and the "world community." Indeed, this rag doll is even too limp for his handlers (and also for Egypt, Jordan and perhaps other Arab states) who fear that Israel is collapsing too fast to suit the fine-tuning of their grand designs and the maintenance of their own positions of power. Yes, the State Department finally has created an Israeli golem that is too suicidal even for its plans. It's somewhat reminiscent of October 1973: Foggy Bottom wanted Israel "to bleed a little bit" but not bleed to death, not yet, anyway. Same now: and maybe, as their end game nears checkmate and a world community without a truly sovereign USA looms ahead, just maybe they're a little nervous in viewing what they have done. The view from the very edge of the cliff is not inviting. Promoting jihad could get out of hand... Yet the war on Israel continues, and the puppet regime continues to act like it's happening on another planet. It's not sustainable: at some point, even a totally politicized IDF and citizenry worn down by decades of socialism and worse will act. And Israel's friends in the American Executive Branch notices that Walmartz garnered less than 24% of those who bothered to vote; that 70% of Jews reject the planned expulsions of Jews from Judea and Samaria; that 80% consider the new Defense Minister to be a disaster, etc. etc. The expulsion of Jews from GK would not have been morally or militarily acceptable even if there was a rat trap plan in place. As it is, events are pushing the Israeli and American establishments to enact some such response for their own self-preservation if not that of their peoples. And just as there's more than one way to skin a cat, there are various rats that may be caught when the trap eventually snaps shut. Dr. Eugene E. Narrett's |Israel and The Endtimes: Writings on the Logic and Surface Turbulence of History" (2006) is now available on the AuthorHouse Web site www.authorhouse.com/BookStore/ItemDetail.aspx?bookid=38671 |
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WHY CAPTURING OR KILLING TERRORIST LEADERS MATTERS
Posted by Barry Rubin, June 25, 2006. |
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The killing of Iraq's insurgency leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has raised an issue frequently discussed in recent years: Does the death (or capture and imprisonment) of a top terrorist or extremist chieftain make a difference? It is easy to answer this question with a no. After all, the movement will continue to exist. Radical movements claim to draw nourishment from the blood of martyrs. New individuals will step forward to fill the vacant positions. In short, it may well seem that nothing changes. Such a conclusion, however, is profoundly misleading for several reasons. First, leadership does matter. The number of charismatic figures is few and highly competent people are rare. The real question is whether the replacements can do as good a job and win as much loyalty as their predecessors. To cite only one example, the terrorist Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) still exists and occasionally commits terrorist acts but after the capture by Turkey of its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, the organization was far weaker. Nor should it be forgotten that there is usually more than one person who thinks himself qualified to be the next leader. Competition over high positions often provokes internal conflict and splits that undermine an organization. It does not take long--or many lost key individuals--before the quality and capability of leaders decline. The war may go on but the other side is less effective. The same applies to others in key positions, for example, bomb-makers or others who create or build weapons. This is a skill not so easily acquired, especially given the consequences of making a mistake. When top PLO or Hamas bomb-makers have been killed, the number of those blowing themselves up trying to learn the trade goes higher and the effectiveness of terrorism declines. General George Patton, the tough-as-nails American commander during World War Two, unsentimentally pointed out that the goal of warfare is not to die for one's country but to make sure that the son-of-a-bitch on the other side died for his. The point is valid. The outcome does not depend on who gets the most glory or the finest poems but on who survives and wins. Of course, there is an unspoken assumption in the argument that eliminating terrorist leaders doesn't matter: that this is a war of attrition and by proving a willingness to be martyrs the terrorists will outlast their opponents. Thus, the mere ability to continue fighting is the most important victory of all. This has been the strategy of the PLO and now of Hamas. The result is that after forty years the former is in a horrible mess and both have inflicted terrible suffering on their own people. Back in the 1960s, PLO leaders like Yasir Arafat argued, as Hamas did today, that by continuing anti-civilian terror they would drive the Israelis to flee or surrender. It did not work for them and will not work for contemporary terrorists elsewhere either. Regarding Iraq, though, this has nothing to do with the U.S. forces remaining there. If American troops leave--an idea that I think makes sense--the insurgents will have to face the Shia and Kurds, 80 percent of the population, who are not going away. In the meantime, they have created so much inter-communal hatred that any terrorist who escapes with his life will be very lucky indeed. Unfortunately, they have made it likely that many of their fellow Sunni will die as well. But to return to the question of terrorist leaders, there is another point besides the difficulty of really replacing lost cadre. One should not believe in the terrorists' propaganda that thousands are ready to become martyrs and tens of thousands are ready to be fighters. After all, terrorist armies tend to be small because they have reached the limit of who can be recruited. I well remember seeing an interview with a Hamas official who had been the most successful recruiter of suicide bombers after he was arrested. In particular, he was asked one obvious but very significant question: Since he was such a passionate believer in the cause, why had he not become a suicide bomber? His answer, and I quote him very precisely, is that "I didn't think I would be very good at it." On one level, this seems a joke. Walking into a place and pushing a button to blow oneself up is not difficult. What is hard is the psychological readiness to do so. Obviously, he--like most people--was not eager to die. Again, the PKK leader Ocalan furnishes a good example. He mercilessly ordered the murder of thousands of Turkish civilians but once captured and facing the death sentence, Ocalan squealed for peace and told his men to stop fighting in order to save his own life. Not all extremists are secretly cowards but many are far from the lions they pretend to be. It is also well established that the leaders of terrorist groups--notably the PLO and Hamas--never put their own children in the front line. In one case, Hamas recruiters approached the son of a top leader when the latter was in prison. As soon as he found out about this, he had his son sent out of the country. To cheer a terrorist group is easy, to urge others to die in a struggle is not too hard, but to ensure one's own end is more challenging. No matter what terrorist propaganda claims, the more casualties there are, the harder it is to raise additional forces. Again, this does not mean that the battle will end or that nobody will volunteer to fight but that there will be more people in the stands cheering and fewer on the playing field shooting. It is more pleasant to chant poems of praise to martyrs while sitting comfortably in one's living room. Higher-quality recruits will also be harder to find since such people are more likely to think carefully about the risks being run or to seek more advantageous employment. While there are many stories of parents bragging--after the fact--about the sacrifice of their children, there are also many accounts of parents acting energetically to stop them from getting themselves killed. So the death or imprisonment of terrorist leaders does matter a great deal. Barry Rubin is Director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, Interdisciplinary Center university. His co-authored book, Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography, (Oxford University Press) is now available in paperback and in Hebrew. His latest book, The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East, was published by Wiley in September. Prof. Rubin's columns can now be read online at: http://gloria.idc.ac.il/columns/column.html. |
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PIE-IN-THE- SKY EDITORIALS DEMONSTRATE MUDDLED THINKING
Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, June 25, 2006. |
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A 03/15/2005 Jackson Diehl New York Times editorial; written at the time of a Shiite Hezbollah rally, presumably for freedom, in the streets of Beirut; suggesting radical Islamic groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah might quell their violent behavior if incorporated into political processes, can now be analyzed bolstered by the passage of time, albeit of somewhat short duration. Hamas, a militant cadre of religious Sunni Arabs, has relatively recently been democratically elected to steward the Gaza strip, land ceded to those morphed Jordanian voters by Israel. Here is a chance to test Mr. Diehl's theory. Alas, Hamas still refuses to recognize the right of Israel to exist, is on the verge of civil war with a more moderate political rival Fatah willing to negotiate with Israel, continues to allow Muslim terrorists to launch deadly rockets into the sovereign Jewish State with impunity, will not renounce homicide/suicide bombing, and does virtually nothing to improve to the dysfunctional lives of the perhaps disillusioned citizens who indeed gave Hamas the key to their hoped for state. Surely, you can take a jihad junky out of a terror cell but you can't take the terror cell out of that junky. Indeed, Diehl's philosophy of dealing with fundamentally flawed souls, as if they were rational, is perilous pie-in the-sky fantasy. The naïve author opines, "If the Islamists can be induced to pursue power by politics-if Hezbollah continues to make its case with rallies rather than car bombs in Beirut-than those movements might be detached from their violent cells and, over time, the more extreme elements of their agendas." He goes on to state "Islamists could be driven over time to moderation" presumably by the political process. Radical Islamic fundamentalists would have to, in effect, renounce twisted Koranic verse, so essential to their collective culture of violence towards the infidel, especially the Jewish infidel, if moderation were a possibility. Furthermore, Hamas would have to renounce the demented venom incorporated into its charter. "The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." Is that likely? Journalists like Jackson Diehl seem afflicted with cognitively dissonant viewpoints of the world, convoluting observations to be compatible with predetermined mindsets attuned to the way they would like things to be. "You can't make a silk purse out of a camel's ear" no matter how hard you try. A secular political process will not dissuade religious fanatics, bizarrely believing paradise awaits those martyrs willing to blow themselves up along with proximate infidel victims. Such criminally insane thought processes are likely beyond redemption. Islamic extremists, as typified by Hamas, Hezbollah, and similarly demented fundamentalist cadres are not unlike metaphorical malignant tumors of the human organism that must be extricated, or in social terms at least have its participant members incarcerated. Indeed, their collective delusional ideation concerning homicide/suicide bombing ominously supplants mankind's natural survival instinct. If such poisonously programmed humans are left to replicate, infecting other members of the species, the danger exponentially increases that some day one such mutated soul will acquire a nuke and be willing to detonate, changing "life" as we know it. Think about that Mr. Diehl. Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at luniglicht@snip.net |
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WILL THERE BE A PALESTINIAN CIVIL WAR?
Posted by Pinhas Inbari, June 25, 2006. |
The Prisoners Document The June 25 Palestinian attack from the Gaza Strip on an IDF military post inside Israel, and the accompanying escalation of fighting between the two sides, is directly connected to the Hamas-Fatah struggle over the "Prisoners Document," which may be put to a Palestinian referendum. The core of that document calls for the unification of all armed factions to carry out joint operations against Israel. What remains in dispute is who exactly will lead the new unified front. Essentially, Hamas' Khaled Mashaal is telling Fatah that it will not determine for the Palestinians how to conduct the "resistance." The Palestinian legislative elections on January 25, 2006, that brought Hamas to power have created an acute, two-fold crisis in the Palestinian Authority: economic and constitutional. Due to the holding back of international aid, the Hamas-led government has had difficulty paying the salaries of its 160,000 employees, who form the backbone of the Palestinian economy. At the same time, there is a constitutional crisis over the distribution of authority between PA Chairman Mahmud Abbas of Fatah and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, both of whom were elected to lead the Palestinians. The dispute over authority has exposed the PA to the danger of civil war, which has sharpened since Abbas called for a national referendum to approve the Prisoners Document formulated by imprisoned Fatah-Tanzim leader Marwan Barghouti. Abbas hopes its adoption will enable the Hamas-led government to meet the international requirements necessary to allow the resumption of international aid. However, this document neither recognizes Israel in a straightforward way, nor calls for an end to terror. It calls for accepting the PLO as a roof organization for all factions and for the adoption of its past resolutions, thus implying the recognition of Israel based on the PLO's previous statements of recognition. With regard to terror, the document calls for uniting all factions under a unified command to continue the "resistance" inside the territories and accepts the establishment of a Palestinian state inside those territories, but without renouncing the fundamental Palestinian right of return to areas inside Israel. All Hamas leaders, including Prime Minister Haniyeh, have made it clear that they reject the document. This rejection may be seen clearly on Hamas websites, although Haniyeh says Hamas is "studying the document in order to change it." Haniyeh has also questioned whether Abbas has the constitutional authority to declare a referendum. In another Fatah-Hamas showdown over authority, Hamas Interior Minister Said Siyam, who is responsible for security, deployed an armed force in the streets of Gaza. When Abbas ordered the disbanding of this force, the Hamas government ignored him. Both Abbas and Haniyeh have repeatedly declared that "civil war is not in our vocabulary." Moreover, when I asked Abbas on the eve of the legislative elections why he had decided to allow them, knowing that this might lead to the rise of Hamas to power, he replied: "for the sake of Palestinian unity." That is to say, Abbas believed it was necessary to risk the continuation of Fatah rule in order to avoid an Algerian-style civil war, and Haniyeh thanked Abbas for this position. Fatah sources have said that the referendum initiative was designed not to lead to a major conflict with Hamas but rather to offer Haniyeh a ladder with which to climb down from the current stalemate. However, the sources added that Abbas did not properly calculate the veto power of Khaled Mashaal, the head of Hamas' Damascus-based political bureau. Alternative Scenarios Haniyeh himself has raised another scenario: not a civil war, but the dismantling of the PA, which could threaten the stability of the whole region. Israeli security sources are indeed concerned for the future of the PA as a functioning system, and they are discussing ideas on how to transfer more responsibilities regarding the Palestinians to international organizations. Abbas does not mention the possibility of dismantling the PA, but during his May European tour he threatened to disperse the government and call for new elections. Haniyeh, however, has said that there was no need to return to the voters only a few months after the last elections, in which all the programs were presented to the people. On a different occasion Haniyeh threatened to "turn the tables" if his government collapses. So calling for early elections could well lead not to new elections but to the collapse of the PA. In such a case, Hamas would end its period of "calm" with Israel. Thus, instead of internal civil war, full-scale fighting against Israel could erupt that unites all the Palestinian factions. Another possible outcome could be a split between a Hamas-led government in Gaza and a Fatah-led government in the West Bank. Fatah sources have said Abbas was considering holding the referendum only in the West Bank. Fatah's Post-Election Plans Fatah-Tanzim leaders close to Barghouti had stated their plans on the eve of the parliamentary elections. They had assumed that Fatah would win by a small margin and had intended to propose to Hamas to join forces in a new command structure for the fight against Israel, ending the current situation in which Hamas and the PLO were launching separate military campaigns. This new joint campaign was to be limited to the territories and have as its target the toppling of Israel's security fence. In this way, they were hoping to disconnect the Palestinian "legitimate resistance" from al-Qaeda-style terror, and this is reflected in the Prisoners Document now under dispute by Hamas and Fatah. Internal Struggles Inside Hamas The chairman of Hamas' Damascus-based political bureau, Khaled Mashaal, views Hamas as in the Iranian-Syrian orbit, while Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Gaza identifies his government as part of the global Muslim Brotherhood movement. However, both view Hamas as affiliated with outside power centers. Haniyeh is also limiting his horizons to the PA, while Mashaal has a broader vision of the global spread of Islam. While Mashaal declared that the Hamas electoral victory was the beginning of a Muslim takeover of Europe, Haniyeh restricted his narrative to the borders of Palestine. According to senior Fatah sources, Mashaal had rejected the very idea of Hamas running in the elections. Once they were held and the Hamas-run government began to sink into difficulties, Mashaal tried to create a mood inside Hamas to have it abandon the idea of running a government, as something that had occurred "too early," and to return to "clandestine resistance." According to these sources, the main problem for Haniyeh is that Mashaal maintains direct command of the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, and this limits Haniyeh's ability to confront Mashaal. Hence, while in the dispute over the Prisoners Document Haniyeh has tried to soften his non-acceptance in ways that leave the door open for the continuation of contacts with Abbas, Mashaal expressed his total rejection right away. By the end of June, Mashaal had softened his tone, but one can suspect the sincerity of this change. Israeli security sources say Haniyeh has demanded that Mashaal help him calm the tensions. Yet both senior Fatah sources and Israeli security sources believe that at the end of the day Mashaal will impose his will on Haniyeh against any compromise with Abbas on any subject, and especially over the referendum. Fatah sources said that before Abbas launched his referendum initiative, he told Haniyeh that once he "distances" himself from Mashaal, Fatah will protect him against the Qassam Brigades. In other words, Abbas encouraged Haniyeh to split Hamas; Haniyeh ignored the offer. Internal Struggles Inside Fatah In Fatah, there is a similar internal struggle, though it is much less acute, given the fact that, unlike Hamas, much of the "outside" leadership arrived in the PA territories after the Oslo agreements. However, there were hardliners that rejected the Oslo agreements and stayed behind in Tunis under the leadership of the head of the Fatah movement, Farouq Qaddumi. Like Mashaal, Qaddumi is linked to the Syrian-Iranian orbit. He openly rejected the parliamentary elections, and after they were held he declared that the new Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) was subject to the PLO parliament-in-exile -- the Palestinian National Committee (PNC). In the current crisis, Qaddumi supports Hamas' stand of not recognizing Israel. However, unlike the situation in Hamas, the Fatah leadership in the PA is prevailing over the outside leadership since the bulk of that leadership is now in Ramallah. Nevertheless, differences inside Fatah can play a role in deciding whether the Palestinians will move toward civil war. Once they arrived in Ramallah, the former Tunis leadership developed a dislike for the younger local leadership led by Tanzim leader Marwan Barghouti, and Muhammad Dahlan and Jibril Rajoub, commanders of the newly established Preventive Security forces. The fact that the Prisoners Document was produced by Barghouti -- the bitter enemy of the old Tunis echelons -- created tensions inside Fatah between the Old Guard and Abbas, whom they suspected of secretly nurturing the Young Guard at their expense. While the Old Guard of Fatah did not easily accept the loss of power to Hamas, and urged the hesitant Abbas to take action, the advent of Barghouti as the one who is controlling the development of events has led the Old Guard to limit their support of Abbas' initiative. While Abbas has so far proved reluctant to initiate a confrontation with Hamas, it is of crucial importance for him to ensure the backing of his fellow Fatah colleagues. The Hamas Conspiracy Against Jordan Support for Abbas in a showdown with Hamas could come from the alarmed Arab governments that feel threatened by the rise of Hamas in the PA, and especially Jordan, which uncovered several attempts by Hamas in Syria to operate inside Jordan. The capture by Israel of Ibrahim Hamed, the military commander of Hamas in the West Bank, led to the exposure of far-reaching plans by Hamas to attack Jordan from the West Bank, according to directives coming from Mashaal in Damascus and backed by Tehran. Abbas expressed "shock" when first informed in Amman of the details and scope of the Hamas conspiracy against Jordan, and this may have been a turning point in his stance toward Hamas. He has again raised the possibility of dispersing the Hamas government and calling for new elections, has accelerated the establishment of a new militia in Gaza to counter Hamas' new force, and has ordered the formation of a new militia in the West Bank as well. Abbas' New West Bank Militia: Aimed at Hamas or Israel? At the same time, Abbas may also be building a military force to confront Israel in the territories in line with the stated intentions of the Prisoners Document. Fatah PLO member Yasser Qaraqe' said that Hamas should not reject the document as it does not recognize Israel. Abbas advisor Ahmad Abd a-Rahman told Al-Jazeera on June 9 that the document seeks only to strengthen the Palestinian position inside the territories. Fatah senior officials have tried to convince Hamas that once "legitimate resistance" inside the territories is recognized, then "let's see what happens." Serious doubts about the possible outcome of the Prisoners Document increased with the nomination of wanted terrorist Mahmud Damra (Abu Awad) as the commander of Fatah's Force 17 in the West Bank. Dimra's connections with Hizballah and Iran raise the question of whether this opened up an opportunity for Iran to penetrate Abbas' new force, and whether this force is meant to confront Hamas -- or Israel -- as specified in the Prisoners Document. A "Lull" Means Rocket Fire at Israel Despite the tempting incentives for Hamas to adopt the document, they have so far rejected it, not only because it is written in Fatah terminology and imposes on Hamas the authority of the secular PLO, but also because it demands that Hamas stop supporting the launching of missiles into Israel. This is the distinction between a tahdiya (lull) and a hudna (ceasefire or armistice). While a tahdiya is perceived as limiting the "resistance" to the launching of missiles at Israel while stopping terror attacks inside Israel, a hudna means a complete cessation of violence. Haniyeh even spoke of a hudna in terms of "an end of conflict." Studying the course of the dialogue launched by the Palestinian factions to avoid a civil war, one can hardly conclude that Hamas was convinced by Fatah's arguments. Abbas advisor Ahmad Abd a-Rahman wrote in Al-Ayyam on June 10 of the unbridgeable division that was uncovered during the dialogue. Hamas flatly rejects the fundamental Fatah worldview including the basic asset of PLO diplomacy -- international legitimacy. Hamas also rejected the Arab League and Saudi initiatives. Furthermore, Hamas is willing to recognize the PLO as the Palestinian roof organization only on condition that far-reaching reforms be adopted that will result in Hamas becoming the leading force in that body. Hence, the dialogue has served to expose the inherent differences between Hamas and Fatah. Notably, Abd a-Rahman also discerned conflicts between the West Bank Hamas and the Gaza-based Hamas. While the West Bankers appear to be closer to Fatah's point of view, the Gazans blocked them from reaching an agreement. Hamas forced Abbas to move the dialogue to Gaza due to its distrust of the Hamas leadership in the West Bank. What Will Happen Now? Overall, there appears to be a strong possibility of a major eruption that might topple the PA, either through civil war or a renewal of fighting with Israel, the drying up of Palestinian financial resources, or all combined. Aware of this potential, Abbas and Haniyeh share a common interest in avoiding civil war. Mashaal and Qaddumi are loosely aligned to prevail over the local leadership and are linked with the Iranian-Syrian orbit. They are both interested in the collapse of the PA. Mashaal is prevailing over Haniyeh, while Abbas is prevailing over Qaddumi. The main problem inside Fatah is between Abbas and the Old Guard. They first criticized him for delivering the PA to Hamas rule, then for his hesitance to disperse them, and now for his apparent link-up with Barghouti and the Fatah warlords. Mashaal, on the one hand, and the Fatah warlords, on the other, are pushing in the direction of a collision, and are now engaged in a major military build-up for D-Day. At the same time, Haniyeh and Abbas are still committed to internal calm. Despite the current low-scale conflict between Fatah and Hamas that is claiming lives in Gaza every day, the two leaders are trying their utmost to prevent a major showdown. Other scenarios can also materialize, including the complete and final collapse of the PA, or a split between Gaza, that will remain under Hamas rule, and the West Bank, that will return to Fatah rule. While there is no reason to suspect Abbas' rejection of a renewed armed conflict with Israel, his build-up of a new militia based on Force 17 personnel who are in contact with Hizballah does raise concerns. Pinchas Inbari is a veteran Palestinian affairs correspondent who formerly reported for Israel Radio and Al Hamishmar newspaper, and currently reports for several foreign media outlets. He is the author of a number of books on the Palestinians including The Palestinians: Between Terror and Statehood. This article was published as a Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) Brief, Vol.5, No. 27, June 25, 2006. |
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THE SIGNS OF MORAL DECAY
Posted by Sergio Tessa (HaDar), June 25, 2006. |
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This morning at 05:30, a groups of five Hamas terrorists, coming from the Gaza Strip, penetrated a few hundred yards inside Israeli territory through a tunnel that was dug during the last few months. During the attack, two young Israeli soldiers were killed. lieutenant Hanan Barak, ZTUQ"L, HI"D, 20 years old from Arad, and sergeant Pavel Sladtzker, ZTUQ"L, HI"D, 20 years old from Dimona, and another young soldier was kidnapped, may Hashem protect him. ALL the Israeli media and the political world are boiling over and the tones are very dramatic. The guerrilla operation is being defined as a very grave fact, whose responsibility is fully on the Hamas, to which a very hard response will be given, because it is an attack of unprecedented gravity. I AM WONDERING: where were all these "honourable men" while HUNDREDS OF MISSILES WERE FALLING ON THE POPULATION OF SDEROT?... Since when an attack on military forces has to be judged with more gravity and deserving a hasher response than an attack on defenseless civilians??? THE LYING POLITICIANS AND THE MEDIA TALKING HEADS are tying to confuse the issues to justifies their ideological and practical impotence, their IMMORALITY, which has allowed a continuous rain of missiles until today without any serious attempt to end it IMMEDIATELY AND BY ALL MEANS. Their reaction todays shows how the perversion of moral values in Israel has reached such a level that Israeli citizens are treated as cannon fodder, as peons to be used and transferred at will, peons in an immoral political process made of surrender in the face of terrorism, made of concessions, appeasement and self-destruction, while the armed forces are considered more important and worthy of being avenged. THERE MUST NOT BE ANY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A JEW IN UNIFORM AND ONE IN CIVILIAN CLOTHES: THE LIVES OF ALL SHOULD BE EQUALLY IMPORTANT! ONLY A VERY HARSH RESPONSE TO ***EVERY*** ATTACK AGAINST US, A VERY PAINFUL AND BLOODY RESPONSE AGAINST THE OTHER SIDE, CAN DECREASE THE OTHER SIDE'S APPETITE TO ATTACK US AND CAN SAVE HUMAN LIVES. End Arab occupation of the Land of Israel: Judea to the Jews, Arabia to Arabs Be'ahavath Israel -HaDaR- a Torah-wing Jew from Qiryath Arba Hebron one of those THEY call "religious fanatic, gun-toting settler" :-) Sergio Tessa can be reached at Hadar-Israel@verizon.net. |
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SHAKE THE EARTH
Posted by Paula R. Stern, June 25, 2006. |
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Israel has, for the most part over the last year, appeared weak and inefficient in its dealings with the Palestinians. We have emphasized our desire for peace and our willingness to make painful concessions and the Palestinians hear only that we are willing to take pain, and willingly oblige. We have made unilateral concessions and for the most part the Palestinians laugh at our having given up much of our bargaining position before the bargaining has even begun. Imagine, they think to themselves, how much more the Israelis will be forced to give up when we actually do sit down to negotiate. And even more, they tease us with promises of peace -- and then explain they only mean a temporary peace, perhaps 10 years, perhaps more, but only if we weaken ourselves enough that they too will be able to follow in the path of their great Mohammed. They remember that Mohammed made a peace agreement, only to break it two years later when the enemy was weakened enough that Mohammed's victory was assured. But all our past mistakes will be as nothing if we do not make the ground shake today, if we do not act without mercy, as they have done. This morning just after dawn, 8 Palestinians attacked an army base in Keren Shalom. As military strategy goes, it was a successful operation in which 2 of the enemy were killed, 6 others wounded, and best of all, the infiltrators were able to steal back across the border after kidnapping an Israeli soldier. This was not a terrorist attack against innocents. We cannot bemoan the lack of decency or mercy that is so common in most terror attacks. This was a military incursion and must be answered in kind. That they will likely choose to hide their prize among Palestinian civilians is not our problem and we must show the same lack of mercy that was shown to us. The fact that they were able to infiltrate and attack is the fault of the Defense Minister and the upper echelons of the army who have failed to allow our soldiers to adequately defend themselves, but the reasons no longer matter. If Israel does not shake the ground to get our soldier back, if the very earth does not vibrate with our anger and our determination to return the soldier and the body parts these ghoulish gunmen claim they took, we may as well surrender all that we have left. The reason we live in Israel, the purpose for its existence is so that we Jews can live in our land, be protected by our army, and take our place among the nations of the world. If Olmert and Peretz are to be worthy of the positions they hold, they will hold back no mercy, until our boys are home. Contact Paula Stern at paula@writepoint.com |
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LIFE FOR POLLARD VS 10 YEARS FOR MONTAPERTO: ANTI-SEMITISM THE ONLY EXPLANATION
Posted by Justice For Jonathan Pollard, June 25, 2006. |
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Jonathan Pollard pled guilty and was indicted on one count of passing classified information with no intent to harm the United States, to Israel, a major non-NATO ally and he received a life sentence. Ronald Montaperto, a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst recently pled guilty to spying for China throughout his 22-year career in government. According to a Pentagon official, Montaperto's value to the Chinese included not only the top secret information that he provided, but also his role in facilitating Chinese deception of US intelligence. According to a statement of facts submitted in the case, the information Montaperto supplied to the Chinese included top secret details of the sale of Chinese military equipment and missiles to the Middle East. Thanks to a plea deal Montaperto will be sentenced in September to a term of no more than 10 years --possibly less. Jonathan Pollard is currently serving his 21st year of a life sentence with no end in sight. In comparison to Montaperto and other spies who have committed far more serious crimes and received far lighter sentences or no jail time at all, Pollard's life sentence is grossly disproportionate. Every other possible excuse for the ongoing, 2-decades-long incarceration and mistreatment of Jonathan Pollard has been eliminated over the passage of time. Anti-Semitism remains the only explanation. A detailed account of the Montaperto case follows. It is called "Ex
DIA Analyst Admits to Passing Secrets to China. Plea deal guarantees
no more than 10 years." and it was written by Bill Gertz. It appeared
in the Washington Times, June 23, 2006. |
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A former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst has pleaded guilty to illegally holding classified documents and admitted in a plea agreement to passing "top secret" information to Chinese intelligence officials. Ronald N. Montaperto, the former analyst who held a security clearance as a China specialist at a U.S. Pacific Command research center until 2004, pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful retention of national defense information, according to court papers and law officials familiar with the case, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "Montaperto admitted to verbally providing [Chinese military] attaches a considerable amount of information that was useful to them, including classified information," according to a statement of facts submitted in the case. Montaperto told investigators he could not recall specific information he gave Chinese attaches Col. Yang Qiming, Col. Yu Zhenghe and other Chinese officers during his 22-year career in government. But the statement said it included both "secret" and "top secret" data. It also said he had close unauthorized relationships with the two officers. The guilty plea was part of an agreement reached Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria. The conviction can carry fines of up to $250,000 and a prison term of up to 10 years. Sentencing is set for Sept. 8. A Pentagon official said Montaperto's value to China included both the secrets he shared and his role facilitating Chinese deception of U.S. intelligence by providing feedback on how those efforts were working. A senior U.S. intelligence official bluntly stated, "He was a spy for China." During questioning by investigators in Hawaii in 2003, where he was dean of the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, Montaperto said he verbally gave Col. Yang and Col. Yu both "secret" and "top secret" information, the statement said. "He admitted to passing classified information to military attaches who the FBI determined were Chinese intelligence officials," said a law-enforcement official involved in the case. Montaperto, 66, joined the DIA in 1981 and eight years later sought a post at the CIA that eventually led to suspicions he was a spy for China. An investigation of his links to Chinese intelligence in 1991 was dropped for lack of evidence. He had been part of a DIA program involving authorized contacts with Chinese embassy officials. However, the statement said Montaperto failed to report his contacts, as required by security rules. After leaving DIA, Montaperto continued in government at the National Defense University and then became the dean of the Pacific Command think tank until his dismissal in 2004. A second investigation that led to his guilty plea was started in August 2001 and led to the discovery of classified documents in his Springfield residence. Reached by telephone Monday at his home in Morehead City, N.C., before the plea agreement was finalized, Mr. Montaperto declined to comment. Investigators from the FBI and Naval Criminal Investigative Service started a sting operation in July 2003 that involved asking Montaperto to join a China-related intelligence program that required him to undergo polygraph testing. Under questioning prior to the test, he made the admissions about passing secrets to China, the statement said. The information supplied to the Chinese included top secret details of the sale of Chinese military equipment and missiles to the Middle East, the statement said. The plea agreement requires Montaperto undergo debriefings and forbids him any contact with foreign agents. "He's already given a lot of information," one official said. According to U.S. intelligence officials, Montaperto was among a number of U.S. intelligence officials who came under suspicion of being informants following the defection of a Chinese intelligence official in the late 1980s. The defector revealed that Beijing had successfully developed five to 10 clandestine sources of information here. Montaperto also was part of an influential group of pro-China academics and officials in the U.S. policy and intelligence community who share similar benign views of China. The group, dubbed the Red Team by critics, harshly criticizes anyone who raises questions about the threat posed by Beijing's communist regime. Contact Justice For Jonathan Pollard at Justice4JP@aol.com |
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FRENCH ANTI-SEMITISM
Posted by Esther Green, June 25, 2006. |
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IT'S TIME TO STAND UP, MY FRIENDS! I copied from the newsletter of today of Leah Lekarev (leahrafaeli@yahoo.com, http://www.lekarev.org, please send it to everybody you know! |
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Once again, the real news is conveniently not being reported as it should. At present, in my Hebrew class, there is a woman who recently made aliya from Paris with her family. I have spoken with her about anti-Semitism in France and she confirmed that it is very, very serious and getting worse every week. She and her family fled Paris and came to Israel, fearing for their lives - literally. This is first hand, my friends To give you an idea of what's going on in France where there are now between 5 and 6 million Muslims and about 600,000 Jews, here is an email that came from another Jew still in France. Please read! Will the world say nothing - again - as it did in Hitler's time? He writes, "I AM A JEW -- therefore I am forwarding this to everyone on all my-mail lists. I will not sit back and do nothing." Nowhere have the flames of anti-Semitism burned more furiously than in France: In Lyon, a car was rammed into a synagogue and set on fire. In Montpellier, the Jewish religious center was firebombed; so were synagogues in Strasbourg and Marseilles; so was a Jewish school in Creteil - all recently. A Jewish sports club in Toulouse was attacked with Molotov cocktails, and on the statue of Alfred Dreyfus in Paris, the words "Dirty Jew" were painted. In Bondy, 15 men beat up members of a Jewish football team with sticks and metal bars. The bus that takes Jewish children to school in Aubervilliers has been attacked three times in the last 14 months. According to the Police, metropolitan Paris has seen 10 to 12 anti-Jewish incidents PER DAY in the past 30 days. Wake up, world! Walls in Jewish neighborhoods have been defaced with slogans proclaiming "Jews to the gas chambers" and "Death to the Jews. A gunman opened fire on a kosher butcher's shop (and, of course, the butcher) in Toulouse, France; a Jewish couple in their 20s were beaten up by five men in Villeurbanne, France. The woman was pregnant; a Jewish school was broken into and vandalized in Sarcelles, France. This was in the past week. So I call on you, whether you are a fellow Jew, a friend, or merely a person with the capacity and desire to distinguish decency from depravity, to do, at least, these three simple things: First, care enough to stay informed. Don't ever let yourself become deluded into thinking that this is not your fight. I remind you of what Pastor Neimoller said in World War II: First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me. Second, boycott France and French products. Only the Arab countries are more toxically anti-Semitic and, unlike them, France exports more than just oil and hatred. So boycott their wines and their perfumes. Boycott their clothes and their foodstuffs. Boycott their movies. Definitely boycott their shores. If we are resolved we can exert amazing pressure and, whatever else we may know about the French, we most certainly know that they are like a cobweb in a hurricane in the face of well directed pressure. Third, send this along to your family, your friends, and your co-workers. Think of all of the people of good conscience that you know and let them know that you and the people that you care about need their help. The number one best selling book in France is "September 11: The Frightening Fraud," which argues that no plane ever hit the Pentagon. Is it any wonder that Aliya from France to Israel has increased dramatically Contact Esther Green at eil100@zahav.net.il |
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ANTI-SEMITISM MUST NO LONGER BE TOLERATED
Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, June 24, 2006. |
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The disrespected State of Israel today is not likely to dissuade its blatantly hostile enemies or more subtly anti-Semitic adversaries from maligning whatever efforts it might take to create a peaceful environment for beleaguered Jewish citizens, within its tiny parcel of land, surrounded by a vast dysfunctional geographic abyss known as the Middle East. Indeed, Israel's very existence violates the core beliefs of Muslim militants who absolutely despise Jews and everything they stand for. Manipulative rogue Islamic rulers of the region have programmed constituencies to spew venom at Jews/Israel, creating an artificial occupied Palestinian people, thus have diverted attention away from their own exploitative practices. Yet again, the Jew and Jewish homeland become convenient scapegoats for wealthy powerful Machiavellian Muslim egomaniacs. Furthermore, many hand wringing especially European non-Muslims give credence to claims disparaging Israel, rarely considering alternative viewpoints. So it goes! Reversing a tidal wave of such skewed thinking is more than difficult. It boggles any rational mind that Gaza Arabs, totally disengaged from Israel, launch deadly missiles at their Jewish neighbor with impunity, retaliatory strikes are made by Israel to protect its citizens, and presumably civilized nations such as France bizarrely castigate the Jews for a disproportionate response. If fairness were imbedded within worldwide mindsets, all reasonable nations and world bodies, including the United Nations and International Court of Justice at The Hague, would rise to the defense of Israel. Subhuman obsessed psychopaths, unleashing missiles at a neighbor for no good reason, ought to be incarcerated. The fact that the disrespected Jewish State is blamed more than those criminally insane Islamic culprits for such outrageous behavior supports the notion that we truly live on a Kafkaesque planet chronically besot with the mind wasting disease of anti-Semitism. This is not acceptable. For the human species to lift itself from the dregs of such moral decay, that debilitating Jew-bashing scourge must be eliminated! An international conference hosted in the Israeli capital of Jerusalem, requesting the presence of political, academic, scientific, journalistic, and intellectual leaders from around the globe, might convene to analyze why anti-Semitic behavior will not abate as we enter a new millennium, despite the most recent and indeed most horrific Holocaust perpetrated primarily but not exclusively against Jews, an event that should have elicited a planetary epiphany supporting the concept "Never Again", virtually ending anti-Semitism forever. If the human species cannot figure out why Jews and the Jewish homeland continue to endure so much undeserved antipathy, and as a consequence of that analysis take steps to reverse such shameful behavior, future prospects of moral growth on this troubled planet are surely dim. Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at luniglicht@snip.net |
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I RECEIVED THIS LOVELY EMAIL YESTERDAY. NO DOUBT FROM A CARING,
GENEROUS SOUL!
Posted by Buddy Macy, June 24, 2006. | |
[NOTE: My remarks below are in red and enclosed in square brackets.]
[The heading, above, and the following two paragraphs are the extent of the sender's email. There was no name or identifying mark at the end of the note. Curiously enough, the two paragraphs directly below also appeared in yesterday's edition of Howard's View (June 23, 2006/27 Sivan 5766), the weekly online newsletter written by Howard Rieger, president of UJC (the Jewish Federation network in North America), which means that the "author" of the email is both a coward and a plagiarist!] The IEC [Israel Emergency Campaign of UJC] work group also allocated $400,000 for trauma relief for those evacuated from the Gaza Strip during the disengagement, to help these Israelis adjust to new homes and communities and rebuild their lives. [Some of the expellees are still not even in there temporary homes, more than 10 months after being "evacuated." http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=50467. $400,000????? That amounts to about $1.00 per expellee per week!! Wait, it gets better - please keep reading.] Federations have helped Gaza evacuees as well. The Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago/Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago raised $300,000 to provide social services for Gaza evacuees in its Partnership 2000 region of Lachish/Safir, for example, while other communities such as the UJA-Federation of Northern New Jersey and United Jewish Communities of Metrowest, N.J. similarly stepped in. [What about national UJC???] [ Following is another paragraph from the same edition of Howard's View, that was not included in my new friend's email:] At the height of the matsav, UJC/ federations raised $360
million for Israel through the Israel Emergency Campaign, which
addressed many needs. During the last year we have been collecting
about $2 million in remaining IEC commitments, and this past week our
IEC Workgroup recommended distributions that will continue to make a
difference for Israelis who have suffered.
[If it was part of the emergency campaign, why was the money kept for
up to a year in a money market account? If some of it had been
distributed sooner, perhaps some of the "Israelis who have suffered,"
would have suffered a little less! And, imagine if UJC had initiated
a campaign that was dedicated exclusively to helping the expellees.
How many millions do you think would have been raised for the
"Israelis who have suffered?"]
[I find the timing of the decision to allocate the whopping
$400,000 to the expellees and the announcement of the allocation in
Howard's View to be quite interesting -- the day after the
launch of a grassroots campaign to help the suffering expellees!
Actually, I find it more than interesting; I find it motivating and
inspiring. I would like to think that the allocation was reported
yesterday as a result of Mr. Rieger having read about the launch of
the grassroots campaign the day before. Potential donors: If that is
indeed the reason, please think about the effect it would have on Mr.
Rieger and UJC if we raised $2,000,000!]
[I will be sending you my first campaign update this Tuesday, six
days after the campaign's radio/Internet radio launch
(www.zoaphilly.org), and five days after its email launch. Thank you
so much for your generosity. Buddy]
SEND CHECKS TO:
Please write the following in the note section of your check: "We give generously!" Please email your video clip or photo to: vegibud@aol.com. Donors of $180 or more will be featured on the one-year anniversary video. Gifts of any amount will be greatly appreciated! For more information, please call 800-BUDDY-NY (800-283-3969) from
the US & CA or 973-785-0057 from anywhere else. Shavua tov!
Contact Buddy Macy by email at VegiBud@aol.com
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JEWS UNDER SIEGE: A CALL FOR ACTION
Posted by Mordechai Ben Menachem, June 24, 2006. |
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This article was written by Charles Jacobs and Seth Klarman. Charles Jacobs is president and Seth Klarman is chairman of The David Project Center for Jewish Leadership in Boston. This appeared in The Jewish Week. |
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A rush of shocking events is creating a "tipping point" in Jewish consciousness. Increasingly, Jews feel our situation has substantially changed, and for the worse. The events include Iran's nuclear threats and Holocaust denial, Hamas' electoral victory, the torture and murder of Ilan Halimi in Paris by a Muslim gang, the "discovery" by a Harvard dean that Jews actually do conspire to control Congress and American foreign policy in the service of Israel and to the detriment of U.S. interests, and the British academic boycott. All of these demonstrate for many that there is a new assault on the world's Jews. The hostility is based on a unique and intense hatred of Israel and deep resentment of its supporters, accompanied by a growing willingness to use violence. As though in a "perfect storm," two global ideologies, rooted in different radical critiques of the West, have suddenly aligned against us: 1. Islamic anti-Semitism. Fueled by Saudi petro-dollars and Iranian revolutionary zeal, a global campaign in mosques and madrassas (Islamic schools) teaches hundreds of millions of Muslims that Jews are the sons of monkeys and pigs, and killing them is a holy deed. The internet and television embellish the message: docudramas in Iran, Egypt and Jordan depict Jews harvesting the organs of Muslim children, killing non-Jews to make matzo, and plotting to rule the world. This poison reaches Muslims in the West. Europe's Jews are besieged and violently assaulted -- on the streets and in the no-longer varnished rhetoric of polite society. In America, Freedom House told Congress it found Saudi-produced hate literature aimed at Americans, Christians -- but mostly Jews -- in mosques across the U.S. 2. In the West, "Palestinianism" -- the notion that an innocent, indigenous people suffers a senseless, cruel oppression by the Jews of Israel (who ought to know better) threatens to become the standard view. It is the basis for an attack by Western radicals on Zionism, Jewish national self-determination, and by extension on Jews everywhere. The "oppression" of an Arab people by Westerners is, for the far Left, morally and politically more consequential than the massacres, enslavements, beheadings, bombings, and ethnic cleansings committed by Arabs and Muslims from London to Sudan, from Spain to Indonesia. These are treated by radicals as distractions from (even caused by) the deeper Zionist evil. Rooted in separate critiques of the West, Islam and the radical left are now allied -- in Europe and increasingly in segments of America's professoriate, media, human rights community, and the leadership of certain Protestant churches. In America, Jews fret as a vicious anti-Israel movement has taken root on American campuses, and Jewish organizations reeled last summer when five mainline Protestant denominations passed anti-Israel resolutions. Most Jews don't yet know the extent to which public high school texts -- and teachers -- are delegitimizing Israel. Anti-Semitism is a virus that morphs. In the West now, hostility to Jews has little to do with the familiar hatreds -- of Judaism or the Jewish "race." Today's antipathy makes Israel "the Jew" and its "crimes" the old "Jewish crimes" -- killing of the innocent, theft (this time of land), arrogance, and the control of business, finance, government and the media by international cabals. As before, "Jewish crimes" stand out as uniquely, even cosmically evil. And as such, they call for correction. We were unprepared; we remain confused. Arab and Muslim Jew-hatred was misread as mere "street talk" that would dissipate when Oslo brought peace. Instead, Jew-hate is an engine of the global jihad. We are flummoxed by the new breed of Western adversaries. After centuries of attack by brutes, illiterates, right wing lunatics, and Christian anti-Semites, antagonism to the Jewish collective is now generated by soft-spoken moralists with high ideals, by "anti-racists" -- some of the most articulate of whom are Jews. Set to defend against thugs yelling "kike," we are attacked instead by college professors -- today a far more insidious enemy -- who berate us for supporting "immorality." No one wants to think that sixty years after the Holocaust, a new storm threatens Jews everywhere. But reality cannot be avoided or minimized. Confused, with our defenses down, Jews need to consider the profound impact of losing the ideological battle that can destroy the Jewish state. This new time requires courageous and talented leaders to grasp these new realities and create strategies to defeat the latest defamations, grounded in a libelous portrayal of the Arab-Israeli conflict. A leadership correctly prioritizing the threat would convince us to lay aside our furious left- right debates, and teach us instead to make Israel's basic case -- from the left as well as from the right. It would gather the support of non-Jews and distinguish clearly friends from enemies. Most important, a new leadership would bravely and tirelessly tell us the truth about our new situation and recruit our talent and resources to the task. If current Jewish leaders -- in this country which has been so good to the Jewish people -- can't or won't do these things, then this small but enormously talented people will have to get new leaders. For in this, the Jewish community cannot and must not fail. Mordechai Ben-Menachem is at Ben-Gurion University. He can be reached by email at quality@computer.org |
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ANTISEMITISM CONFERENCE IN JERUSALEM
Posted by Tsvi November, June 24, 2006. |
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Between the 12th and 15th of June, 2006, the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at the Hebrew University hosted an international conference entitled Antisemitism, Multiculturalism and Ethnic Identity. Leading academics, journalists, authors and activists from many countries including the USA and Australia presented well-written papers based on observation and research. The high point of the conference was, no doubt, the screening of Obsession, a forceful documentary featuring spine-chilling clips from Saudi, Palestinian, Egyptian, Iranian, Hizbullah and Al-Jazeera TV along with interviews with Israeli, American and reform-minded Arab commentators. The film is all about radical Islam and its global jihad. In the film, Ms. Nonie Darwish, an Egyptian-born Arab Moslem who now lives in Los Angeles explains the radical Moslem thinking that underlies the scenes of huge crowds of raving men (and sometimes women too) shouting "Death to America", "Death to Israel" and "Islam is destined to rule the world". Often, these mass demonstrations in Lebanon, Iran, Pakistan, Palestinian territories and elsewhere include burning the US flag and effigies of President Bush, Sharon and others. After the screening, Ms. Darwish, who participated in the conference, gave a thirty minute talk that provided keen insights into the radical Arab-Islamic mentality. Ms. Darwish personally underwent this hate (her terminology) indoctrination while growing up in Gaza and Egypt before emigrating to the US. During the conference, many trenchant points were made which I wish to share with you. First, antisemitism is not just a Jewish problem. Rather, it has tremendous ramifications for the future of Western civilization as a whole and the maintenance of a, more or less, sane world order. History shows that antisemitism starts with Jews but does not end with them. As a reaction to Nazi racism and the Holocaust, it is no longer acceptable for polite, liberally-inclined Europeans to be anti-Jewish. Jews, in fact, are well accepted today as part of the European mainstream. Furthermore, the large wave of immigration into Europe from all over the world and most especially from former colonies in North Africa and Asia has transformed almost all Western democracies into multicultural nations. Historically, it was the Jews who advocated multiculturalism and pluralism as a framework for tolerance within which they could be both Jewish and British or German or French, etc. Multiculturalism presumes a certain degree of mutual respect and acceptance of other ethnic groups within a common political framework based on shared fundamental values. Today multiculturalism has backfired because the vast majority (over thirty million) of immigrants in Europe is Moslems who, for the most part, are not integrating themselves into European societies. Indeed, some Moslem clerics openly proclaim Islam's intent to replace Christianity in Europe. Serious demographers calculate that Europe will be Islamic in about fifty years since all Western European birth rates now fall well below the replacement level. Furthermore, the female replacement rate, another indicator of demographic contraction, is also negative. Of course, this does not hold true for Moslems in Europe since they produce many more children per family than do their non-Moslem neighbors. To make matters worse, there is a fairly large hard core, estimated by one of the lecturers at around 15%, of radical Moslems who support al-Qaeda, have carried out terror attacks in London, Madrid and elsewhere, who predominate in the Moslem communities and threaten moderate Moslems who do accept Western ideas of equality and mutual respect between ethnic groups and different religions too. These radicals are vehemently anti-Israel and antisemitic. It is these religious radicals who are mainly responsible for the precipitous increase in the number of attacks on Jewish persons and institutions in recent years. To appease Moslem, most European governments have long since adopted a pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel stance. As Bat Ye'or, the author of Eurabia, elucidated in her talk, there is a constantly expanding European-Arab sphere of cooperation which is leading to Christian dhimmitude (the social inferiority of non-Moslems). Some European politicians like London's mayor, Ken Livingston accept and welcome Arab hate mongers while insulting Jews. In the Netherlands one law maker has even suggested adopting the Shari'a Islamic law code. Astute politicians adopt anti-Israel and even antisemitic positions so as to attract Moslem voters. Dr. Margaret Brearley, a former member of the Archbishops Council who works with the London Jewish Cultural Centre, spoke about antisemitism in Britain which is now at an all-time high. She detailed the Anglican Church's strong anti-Israel stance and activities as well as their efforts to cultivate links with the UK's Moslem community which is estimated to number between two and four million. Dr. Brearley went on to say that multiculturalism is still well accepted by the British but has, nevertheless, resulted in the creation of ghettos where Moslems concentrate and live in tight-knit neighborhoods in which mainstream British values based on "live and let live" attitudes are rejected. She reminded her audience of Abu Humza al Masri and other radical Islamic clerics who openly preach hatred of the Jews and encourage holy war against both Christians and Jews. They make good use of their rights to free speech in the democratic country they despise. A public opinion poll among Moslems in Britain in 2006, after the July, 2005 London bombings, found that 7% of Moslems believe that bombings in the UK are justified and a further 37% feel that the Jewish community is a legitimate target for attacks. The Anglican Church, which is in a state of steep decline, has set out on a path of accommodation with the Moslems that finds expression in forceful anti-Israel and anti-Jewish motifs. Most Europeans today side with the Arabs in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the more radical left-wingers question Israel's very legitimacy. Essentially, old fashioned antisemitism has been replaced by anti-Zionism. Like antisemitism, attacks on Israel can be devoid of facts, illogical and based on a double standard. Fiamma Nirenstein who writes a column for La Stampa, hosts her own TV show in Italy and has authored several books about the left's collusion with Islam's agenda including antisemitism made a passionate plea to stand up to the new antisemitism and fight radical Islamic terrorism. Nirenstein believes that Judeo-Christian civilization and modern civil society is threatened by Islamic radicals and their leftist apologists. The West's response must be firm. The conference did not go into the various definitions of multiculturalism nor make a clear distinction between multiculturalism and pluralism. Anton Pelinka of the University of Innsbruck did, however, note that there are several types of anti-Semitism (i.e. socio-economic, socio-psychological. geopolitical and religious). He pointed out that antisemitic harangues provide self-contained simple explanations that do not require proof. Professor Richard Landes of Boston University analyzed conspiracy theories focusing on how Jews are frequently blamed for the world's ills. He went on to discuss the conspiracy theories that explain the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. Landes said that some of the 9/11 conspiracy theories are examples of the "inversion of cognitive egocentricism". According to this line of reasoning President Bush, the Mossad, etc. are responsible for the 9/11 attack because we (the USA) are really the bad guys who had the most to gain from the destruction in NYC while Bin Ladin is just an underprivileged Third World protestor against American hegemony, capitalism, colonialism, globalization and imperialism. Anti-Americanism, according to several speakers, is widespread in Europe because people believe that America dominates the world, attacks countries near and far, selfishly exploits the world's economy and is, of course, guilty of the worst sin of all; namely: supporting Israel and Israeli "colonialism". The power of conspiracy theories to take root among large numbers of believers, Landes explained, is founded on the capacity of these theories to point a finger at the people who allegedly benefit most from the situation at hand. Everything then fits into place to enable believers to understand the hidden forces working against them (e.g. The Elders of Zion). Professor Shmuel Trigano of the University of Paris, X-Nantere sees Europe's alignment with the Arabs as a trade-off: Europe supports the Arabs against Israel while the Arabs support Europe against American dominance. In addition to their objections to many aspects of American foreign policy, there are other factors behind Europe's anti-Americanism according to Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld who presented an incisive analysis of ethnic tensions in the Netherlands. He pointed to three important themes: Europeâs is militarily weak because European nations have been relying on US protection since WWII, Europe is dependent on Arab oil for its very survival and European statesmen cannot take a position on any issue without first taking Moslem Arab public opinion into consideration. Professor Robert Wistrich, the director of the Center for the Study of Antisemitism, noted in his keynote lecture that Europeans are also somewhat jealous of America which can be considered the world's most successful attempt at creating a viable multicultural society. Not surprisingly, there is comparatively little anti-Semitism in the US except for the fringe Nazi adherents and black Jew-hating activists who openly insult Judaism and instigate racial friction on college campuses. To sum up, we see increasing Arab/Islamic pressure on Europe but most people are still in a state of denial; claiming that the international jihad in its varying forms is not really a serious threat yet. Meanwhile, Europeans are trying to placate and appease Arabs. A key element in European-Arab cooperation is being anti-Israel. Anti-Zionism, however, is a modern adaptation of antisemitism. The humanist, liberal left (which has traditionally included large numbers of Jews) has no problem with being anti-colonial which means being pro-Palestinian which means being anti-Israel. Since the left is also against (inhuman) capitalism and globalization, it is also, by definition, anti-American. Paradoxically, the multicultural left accepts and supports European Moslem communities even though Islam relegates women to subservient status, does not tolerate homosexuality and is not favorably disposed to democracy or openness (as evidenced by the world-wide rampage protesting the publication of the Mohammed cartoons in Denmark). One speaker stated that multiculturalism has proven to be a Trojan horse for Europe, allowing in large numbers of Moslems who are antagonistic to a secular, liberal life style. Another commentator added that multiculturalism, as it has evolved in Europe today, has led to a significant increase in antisemitism. It is, therefore, bad for the Jews who are now part of the establishment in many countries. Jews in Holland, France and elsewhere are advised to take off their kipot and conceal outward signs of Jewishness. Even on the academic/intellectual level antisemitism (in the form of being anti-Israel) has manifested itself in various boycott initiatives. Russian, Chinese, Iranian, Saudi, and Egyptian academics are never boycotted or condemned for their countriesâ aggressions and abuses of human rights. But the double standard allows Europeans to indict Israeli academicians with impunity. I would add that this same double standard is responsible, in large measure, for biased news reporting where Israel is concerned. At the BBC, for instance, IRA operatives are "terrorists" but Hamas suicide bombers who blow up children on buses in Israel are "militants" (a term which can actually have a positive connotation). Contact Tsvi November at tsvinovember@hotmail.com |
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PALESTINIANS
Posted by May Leiner, June 23, 2006. |
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For those of you who don't like Dennis Miller, who is not Jewish, you may want to reconsider after reading his brilliant comments that follow. Please pass it on to your friends. For those who don't know, Dennis Miller is a comedian who has a show called Dennis Miller Live on HBO. Although he is not Jewish, he recently had the following to say about the Middle East situation: |
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"A brief overview of the situation is always valuable, so as a service to all Americans who still don't get it, I now offer you the story of the Middle East in just a few paragraphs, which is all you really need. Here we go: The Palestinians want their own country. There's just one thing about that: There are no Palestinians. It's a made up word. Israel was called Palestine for two thousand years. Like "Wiccan," "Palestinian" sounds ancient but is really a modern invention. Before the Israelis won the land in the 1967 war, Gaza was owned by Egypt, the West Bank was owned by Jordan, and there were no "Palestinians." As soon as the Jews took over and started growing oranges as big as basketballs, what do you know, say hello to the "Palestinians," weeping for their deep bond with their lost "land" and "nation." So for the sake of honesty, let's not use the word "Palestinian" any more to describe these delightful folks, who dance for joy at our deaths until someone points out they're being taped. Instead, let's call them what they are: "Other Arabs Who Can't Accomplish Anything In Life And Would Rather Wrap Themselves In The Seductive Melodrama Of Eternal Struggle And Death." I know that's a bit unwieldy to expect to see on CNN. How about this, then: "Adjacent Jew-Haters." Okay, so the Adjacent Jew-Haters want their own country. Oops, just one more thing: No, they don't. They could've had their own country any time in the last thirty years, especially six years ago at Camp David. But if you have your own country, you have to have traffic lights and garbage trucks and Chambers of Commerce, and, worse, you actually have to figure out some way to make a living. That's no fun. No, they want what all the other Jew-Haters in the region want: Israel. They also want a big pile of dead Jews, of course -- that's where the real fun is -- but mostly they want Israel. Why? For one thing, trying to destroy Israel - or "The Zionist Entity" as their textbooks call it -- for the last fifty years has allowed the rulers of Arab countries to divert the attention of their own people away from the fact that they're the blue-ribbon most illiterate, poorest, and tribally backward on God's Earth, and if you've ever been around God's Earth, you know that's really saying something. It makes me roll my eyes every time one of our pundits waxes poetic about the great history and culture of the Muslim Mid east. Unless I'm missing something, the Arabs haven't given anything to the world since Algebra, and, by the way, thanks a hell of a lot for that one. Chew this around and spit it out: Five hundred million Arabs; five Million Jews. Think of all the Arab countries as a football field, and Israel as a pack of matches sitting in the middle of it. And now these same folks swear that if Israel gives them half of that pack of matches, everyone will be pals.. Really? Wow, what neat news. Hey, but what about the string of wars to obliterate the tiny country and the constant din of rabid blood oaths to drive every Jew into the sea? Oh, that? We were just kidding. My friend, Kevin Rooney, made a gorgeous point the other day: Just reverse the numbers. Imagine five hundred million Jews and five million Arabs. I was stunned at the simple brilliance of it. Can anyone picture the Jews strapping belts of razor blades and dynamite to themselves? Of course not. Or marshaling every fiber and force at their disposal for generations to drive a tiny Arab State into the sea? Nonsense. Or dancing for joy at the murder of innocents? Impossible. Or spreading and believing horrible lies about the Arabs baking their bread with the blood of children? Disgusting. Now, as you know, left to themselves in a world of peace, the worst Jews would ever do to people is debate them to death. Mr. Bush, God bless him, is walking a tightrope. I understand that with vital operations in Iraq and others, it's in our interest, as Americans, to try to stabilize our Arab allies as much as possible, and, after all, that can't be much harder than stabilizing a roomful of super models who've just had their drugs taken away. However, in any big-picture strategy, there's always a danger of losing moral weight. We've already lost some. After September 11th our president told us and the world he was going to root out all terrorists and the countries that supported them. Beautiful. Then the Israelis, after months and months of having the equivalent of an Oklahoma City every week (and then every day) start to do the same thing we did, and we tell them to show restraint. If America were being attacked with an Oklahoma City every day, we would all very shortly be screaming for the administration to just be done with it and kill everything south of the Mediterranean and east of the Jordan. Contact May Leiner at mayleiner@cs.com |
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ISRAEL MUST RESCUE THE WORLD AND ITSELF FROM DISASTER
Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, June 23, 2006. |
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The potentially disastrous effects of Global warming present themselves, ever more starkly, in ominous scenarios documented by exponentially increasing ice melts at and near our planet's poles as well as on mountain peaks in Peru's Andes, and in increasing intensities of extreme weather events, related to sustained increases in water temperatures, exemplified by hurricanes along the U.S.A.'s gulf coast. Furthermore, most credible scientists hypothesize that the burning of fossil fuel has substantially contributed to this phenomenon. Indeed, major suppliers of the vicious viscous substance, surely threatening "life" as we know it on our one home in the universe, just happen to reside on the shortlist of perilous archenemies of the beleaguered State of Israel. Fundamentalist Islamic regimes such as oil-rich Saudi Arabia and Iran underwrite worldwide fanaticism, while oil-addicted industrial nations pour ever more revenues into the coffers of these pusher nations. Indeed, the carbon based heat-retaining molecules that so threaten our planet climatically imperil Israel's socio-economic climate, ever inducing industrial world policy decisions to the Jewish State's detriment. Thus it is imperative that Israeli Jews aggressively react to such facts on the ground, channeling all necessary resources into developing a cheap efficient alternative energy source to supplant fossil fuel. A research and development center for such a cerebral activity can be constructed in the Golan Heights. Concurrently, the political climate of Israel must be safeguarded from a disastrous policy contemplated by its current Prime Minister and his cronies. Ehud Olmert, alas, is willing to negotiate away Israeli territory with the two-named double game unapologetic erstwhile Holocaust trivializer Fatah potentate Abbas Mazen, perhaps at the behest of a Bush Administration in need of planetary kudos, or in fact unilaterally cede this precious land if all else fails. Have such Israeli leaders, led by a Sharon baton carrying Olmert, lost their collective mind? Can they not envision Hamas salivating to take credit for bludgeoning a retreating Israel into submission? The frequency of rocket fire into Israel will only increase, and surely be deadlier, with more launching sites available. Furthermore, 70,000 evicted grieving Israeli citizens from Judea and Samaria, dwarfing in number those still grieving evicted Israeli citizens formerly of Gaza, will create a reprehensible morale-deflated climate for a tormented Eretz-Israel. No doubt, Israel must begin to develop a usable alternative energy source to rescue an otherwise endangered species from catastrophically overheating to the point of no return, while simultaneously rescuing its own endangered State from political folly of no return. Is anything more urgent? Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at luniglicht@snip.net |
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THE 'WISH' OF PERETZ, ET ALIA
Posted by Professor Eugene Narrett, June 23, 2006. |
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The unsustainable situation of Israel and the Jewish people is writ large not only in the rockets that continue to rain down on Jewish towns; it is not only that these rockets are launched by elements of global jihad from the ruins of Jewish towns destroyed by the "disengagement" of Sharon - Peres in August 2005; it is not only that these wholesale and reiterated acts of war are met with dabs of ointment ("targeted air strikes") by Israel's political and military top echelons who profess to see no other alternative, no other possibility: it is that Israel's governing establishment agreed to act as middleman and shipping company for the transfer of thousands of M-16s automatic rifles and a million rounds of ammo (you can murder a lot of Jews with a million rounds) to Fatach ("conquest"), the military arm of the PLO now being presented as the "moderate alternative" to their first cousin, Hamas. Already Jews have been murdered by this latest shipment of weapons as they have been murdered for 13 years by the weapons given to them by Israeli and western governments under Oslo. Israel is a western government and a western state. That is to say that is deeply perhaps terminally infected with Hellenism, with the insitutionalized lies and suicidal tendencies that more and more characterize the West. The geopolitics of the West are more and more about preempting or destroying any kind of Jewish state in the Promised Land and with decimating if not exterminating the Jewish people. This was the plan of the Nazis, of Marx ("to eliminate the opiate" Judaism as an author has noted), and of the French Revolution that meant to efface biblical religion while freeing the Jews to be people like any other people, clever beasts supposedly ruled by reason to fulfill their natural passions. In other words, no more Judaism. Yes, the plan of Hadrian lives on ever more clearly as the West declines. Its sunset brings out the colors of its inception: material and spiritual theft, homicidal slander, and murder of the Jews. It cannot be much more blatant than Uncle Sam using Israel to ship arms to Fatah to murder Jews. The top political - judicial - military echelons allow Hamas to sit in Jerusalem; they meet with Fatah to plan the occupation of the Jewish heartland by an islamic state; they speak openly of their "wish to expel 70,000 Jews within 18 months" from Judea and Samaria. The 'left' used to call this a "revolutionary situation." All hope for meaningful reform or policy alternatives seems blocked, suppressed. Law becomes blatantly politicized, punitive and illegal. The state puts its citizens on the chopping block and demeans their mortal dilemma. With power comes responsibility: the more power, the more responsibility. Those with power in Israel, to the extent that they have it, those in the Jewish world anywhere with power owe it to their brethren to act to fundamentally change the current state of events and to assert the right of Jews to live safely and productively everywhere in the Promised Land. The storm is very near at hand. Professor Eugene Narrett's new book, Israel and The Endtimes is now available at this web site: www.authorhouse.com/BookStore/ItemDetail.aspx?bookid=38671 The book discusses the nature and origin of Western Civilization, its intimate, complex and terribly punitive relation to Judaism and the Jewish people. Dr. Narrett's previous books are "Gathered against Jerusalem: Essays on a False Peace" and "Israel Awakened" |
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1 DISGRACEFUL SITUATION AND 1 ABSOLUTE ACT OF STUPIDITY
Posted by Lee Caplan, June 23, 2006. |
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1. A Disgraceful Situation "Supreme Court´s Procaccia Keeps Girl In Prison"
Supreme Court Justice Ayalah Procaccia gave the young teenager a choice: Leave home and town, pay 7,000 shekels, and guarantee another 30,000 - or stay in prison. The girl, Yiskah, was arrested ten days ago for trying to block the building of a wall in the middle of Hevron's "Avraham Avinu" neighborhood, and her trial is today. She and several others stand accused of throwing stones at policemen during a violent evacuation of a building - though the Prosecution agrees it cannot be certain of the identities of the stone-throwers. Yiskah is being kept company in prison by two other friends, also residents of Hevron. One of them refuses to cooperate with the authorities in any way, and the other says she won't leave until Yiskah is released. The original incident occurred on Tuesday, June 13, after Justice Procaccia turned down the Jews' appeal for an injunction against the construction of the wall: a 2-3-story concrete barrier adjacent to the Jewish neighborhood's playground and apartments. The Jewish community says the wall enables an Arab family, previously banished because of terrorist activities, to return to its home and rebuild. Ten days ago, dozens of police, riot squad, soldiers and officers appeared in the Avraham Avinu neighborhood for the wall-rebuilding mission. Facing them was a group of over 20 Jewish girls who had locked themselves into the community kindergarten, one of the areas declared a "closed military zone" for the occasion. The ensuing two-hour attempt to break into the building and remove the girls was marked by a violent struggle on both sides. No one was hurt, but 19 of the girls, between the ages of 12 and 15, were arrested. The incident caused only a slight delay in the rebuilding plans, and by Wednesday, a slightly taller, reinforced concrete wall was standing. "We have no intentions of living behind walls," a Hevron spokesman said afterwards, "especially when they are built to protect Arab terrorists. There is no reason why a known terrorist family should be awarded a home overlooking a Jewish neighborhood in Hevron. We will continue to protest until the wall is removed from our midst, one way or another." Overturned Rulings In the meantime, two lower courts ordered Yiskah released to house arrest, but the Prosecution appealed each time. When the case reached the Supreme Court, Justice Procaccia - as she has done in the past - essentially ordered the 14-year-old girl held in prison until the end of the proceedings against her. However, she also ordered a quick trial, beginning today. "It's theoretically possible for the girls to be released today if the Prosecution presents its case quickly and my daughter is quickly convicted; which we are quite sure will be the outcome," Yiskah's mother told Arutz-7. "We, for our part, don't have any witnesses to call or anything like that. We're not taking part in this farce. But if the Prosecution asks for another day for summaries and the like, then it could take some extra time, and maybe even spill over into the month-long summer recess..." Yiskah's mother says that her daughter has absolutely no sympathies for the justice system. "She has no interest in cooperating with a legal system in Israel that is not according to Jewish Law, and with criminals who accuse her of being a criminal," her mother said. A number of years ago, Yiskah's father was placed under house arrest and then administrative detention for almost two years. He was later awarded 100,000 shekels for having suffered false arrest. Re-education The father of one of the other girls accuses the system of attempting to "re-educate" those who do not agree with it. His daughter, Oriyah, 15, originally told the court, "I did nothing wrong, and there is no reason for me to sign on bail and thus recognize the court system that consistently fights against me and my ideals." The judge sent Oriyah back to her cell, where she was held for a week with no charges pressed against her. "In other words," her father later wrote, "any citizen in Israel can be arrested for no reason and held in jail indefinitely simply because he does not recognize the authority of the court system. 'If you sign and recognize our authority,' the judges essentially explain, 'you can go free. If not, we have methods to help you to understand.' "In Oriyah's case, those methods included revoking her rights to speak with her parents on the phone, and eventually separating her from her friends and sending her to a filthy solitary cell in a prison reserved for drug dealers and other sordid characters. The bottom line is that Oriyah, a minor, was imprisoned to force her to change her opinions and ideals. In plain English, that's called re-education." When Oriyah was later charged with unruly behavior in a public place, the police claimed they had a video proving the charge. However, the prosecution soon admitted that there was no such video or any other evidence against her. "Nevertheless," her father wrote, "the judge ruled that Oriyah will remain in prison until she is willing to sign on bail. With astounding candor she wrote that... the reason for Oriyah's imprisonment is her refusal to recognize the authority of the court... Oriyah is now back in prison. Not because she committed a crime. She is there simply because the court's re-education project has not yet been successful. "Oriyah is a strong girl and has a solid support system of family and
friends. With G-d's help, she will be fine. What is not fine is the
fact that Israel's ruling elite is using the court system to oppress
and re-educate Israel's Jewish majority."
Dana Olmert's not in jail -- so why is 15 year old Oriyah in jail?
Remember Dana Olmert who participated in the demonstration which
called the Ramatkal a murderer? Another demonstrator, much younger and way on the other side of the political spectrum, 15 year old Oriyah S. from Hebron, demonstrated 9 days ago (against the theft of a portion of the Hebron Jewish community playground for "security" purposes) but unlike Dana Olmert, Oriyah S. was thrown into jail. Even though she is a minor and even though she is not accused of any violence whatever, she is STILL in jail 9 days later. Please help by calling the new head of the Knesset Law Committee, Prof. Menachem Ben-Sasson, 02-6753115. Ask why 9th grader Oriyah S. is in jail whereas Dana Olmert is out of jail. The obsessive and unfair witch-hunts against Israelis who just happen to live in Judea & Samaria simply must stop -- your phone call will help. Please carefully write down the answer you are given and forward the answer to sddym@bezeqint.net immediately. Thank you so much!!! 2. One absolute act of stupidity "Guns Used in Fatah Terror Attacks Supplied by Israel"
Members of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' personal guard, "Force 17", used Israel's weapons to shoot Israelis this week, according to Israeli security and PA terrorist sources. Israel is the supplier of the weapons used in the gunfire that killed one Israeli and wounded several others, according to an interview written by journalist Aaron Klein and released Friday by WorldNetDaily. Klein quoted Abu Yousuf, a senior member of Force 17, who like many other guards is a member of the Al-Aksa Martyrs' Brigades terror group. Klein was interviewed on on IsraelNationalRadio's Tovia Singer Show. Olmert's administration decided to transfer the U.S.-manufactured weapons to Abbas' guard troops in a bid to shore up his ability to protect himself in the fight against the terror group Hamas for control of PA security forces. The recent shipment included 3,000 M-16 automatic machine guns and one million rounds of ammunition. "I did this because we are running out of time and we need to help Abu Mazen," Olmert told reporters on Tuesday, using Abbas' nom de guerre. Olmert made the announcement one day before heading to Petra for an official meeting with Abbas, hosted by Jordanian King Abdullah II at a quiet breakfast during a gathering of Nobel Prize laureates and other notables. Vice Premier Shimon Peres and world-renown author Elie Wiesel attended the gathering as well. Abu Yousuf said bluntly that the weapons will be used to shoot Jews, and added that the terror organization may share the weaponry with Hamas as well, if its 3,000-member militia is absorbed into the general PA police force. "These weapons will not be used in an internal war but against Israelis," Yousuf told Klein. He added as far as his group was concerned, Israel transferred the weapons to his Force 17 unit "for its own political purposes. We are not concerned with the reasons. The weapons will not be used against our brothers, only [against] Israelis." The terrorist also called WND to claim responsibility on behalf of Al-Aksa Martyrs' Brigades for an ambush of an armored Israeli bus earlier in the week in Samaria, just outside the town of Ofra. Three school girls were lightly wounded in the attack, which security officials said would have been more serious had the bus not been armored. Security sources added that the Israel Defense Force suspects a terror cell from Yousuf's group in Ramallah of carrying out other recent attacks, including an ambush which resulted in the death of an Israeli Arab traveling on a highway near Jerusalem. The senior terrorist lives with other members of the group in the Mukata, the former Ramallah residence of the late PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat. Yousuf also revealed that many of the weapons are being stored in the compound. Al-Aksa Martyrs' Brigades has been on the U.S. State Department list of terrorist organization since March 2002. The group took joint credit with the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization for the April 19th bombing of a Tel Aviv restaurant in which 11 people were murdered, including 16 year old Daniel Wultz of Florida. "MK Calls for Gaza Ground Offensive as Airstrikes Continue"
Likud MK Yuval Steinitz is calling for a Gaza ground offensive to halt the barrage of Kassam rockets on Israeli towns. Meanwhile PM Olmert stated that targeted anti-terror airstrikes will continue. During a speech at the Caesarea Economic Conference in Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert stated, "Israel will continue to carry out targeted attacks against terrorists and those who try to harm Israeli citizens." Israel has recently increased air strikes into Gaza due to the non-stop Kassam rocket attacks on southern Israeli towns near the border with Gaza. Three Kassam rockets were fired Thursday evening, one damaging a hothouse in Netiv HaAsara. Two more were launched in the vicinity of Sderot Friday morning. Sderot residents are marching to Jerusalem beginning Monday in protest of the government's failure to halt the attacks on their city. Steinitz, former chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee has called for a ground offensive into the Gaza strip to eliminate terrorist infrastructure and rocket launching capabilities. In an interview on Voice of Israel Radio, Steinitz stated, "I call on the Israeli government not to wait any longer and to begin a comprehensive ground operation in Gaza in order to fundamentally damage the terror infrastructure in a few weeks." Steinitz compared the suggested operation to the successful Operation Defensive Shield launched in 2002 by then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon into Arab-controlled areas located in the Jewish provinces of Judea and Samaria. That operation lasted less than three weeks, and halted a string of suicide terror attacks including a massive bombing at a hotel in Netanya during a Passover Seder. Former Defense Minister and Likud party member Moshe Arens believes that an air offensive is incapable of ending rocket attacks, and Israel must reclaim parts of the Gaza Strip that were ceded to terrorists during the unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the region last August. "Israel leads in ballistic interception technology, but the trajectory of Kassams is just too short to make interception possible," Arens wrote in the Haaretz daily Hebrew newspaper. "The obvious move to cut down on this danger is for the IDF to reoccupy unilaterally some of the areas in the northern Gaza Strip that were so foolishly abandoned unilaterally last August." Despite the failure of air strikes to halt rocket launches, members of the current defense establishment are trying to avoid a ground invasion into Gaza. Major General Eliezer Shkedy, Commander of the Israeli Air Force stated, "We carry out attacks in the Gaza Strip daily," during an interview with Haaretz. "The air operations are nearly the only way to operate in Gaza. The other option is a land operation, and we must do everything possible to avoid that." Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority is criticizing Israel for civilian fatalities caused by the air strikes. A statement from PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas condemned the IDF's preventive attacks. "The increased frequency of women and children falling victims to Israeli missiles, in an age of very precise electronic warfare, indicates a deliberate intention on the Israeli part to target every Palestinian and to cause maximum human, physical, and psychological damage," the statement claimed. The defense establishment has noted that the civilian deaths are due primarily to the fact that terrorists have made a concerted effort to concentrate their activities in Arab population centers, increasing the likelihood of bystander casualties. The IAF goes to great lengths to reduce the chance of civilian injuries, and has launched investigations into each air strike which has any Arabs that were not the intended terrorist targets. In his Caesarea conference address, Olmert apologized "from the
depths of my being" for the Arab fatalities, stating, "but I value the
lives and the welfare of the residents of Sderot as much, if not more
than the residents of Gaza."
Contact Lee Caplan at leescaplan@yahoo.com
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ACCIDENT AT EIN ZURIM KRAVILOT
Posted by Anita Tucker, June 23, 2006. |
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We were told last night to keep praying for refuat six year old Yehuda ben Shoshana His family had a son buried, Lo Aleinu, in Gush Katif during the Struggle and reintered him in after the expulsion in Mt. of Olives. They deserve that all pray for refuat Yehuda Doctors removed part of Yehuda's spleen, damage to stomache -- missed liver by drop B"H -- a lot of internal bleeding. Six yr.old had no external injury so didn't realize seriousness at first when was hurt playing on piles of building dirt left in middle of Ein Tzurim-Neve Dekalim caravilla site. Housing Ministry's contractor removed the piles of dirt from place of accident. But, unfortunately they didn't remove other dangers from all over site. Children have nowhere to play. Only outdoor places to play in Ein Tzurim caravilla site are in piles of dirt and blocks and building holes not only in "new" site of Netzer Hazani but even still in old half of Neve dekalim where the families moved in before Pesach. Last nite I went to kiss my grandchildren good night and say Mazal Tov as they slept for the first time in their new bigger beds (as have grown alot in ten months ) in this new home. I said "Mazal Tov on your new Bayit". My four your old grandson Raiee said "this is not my my Bayit, this is my Caravilla". I said, "yes but this caravilla is your new Bayit". He said "NO!! this is my caravilla". I repeated "Yes it is a caravilla but now it is your family's new bayit". Raiee said emphatically "THIS IS MY CARAVILLA, MY BAYIT IS IN NETZER HAZANI!!!" on the verge of tears and very upset with me that I wasn't saying the truth. I asked my son Amichai and daughter in law Naomi if they had any discussion on this with him. They said "no, not at all -- but that he does always emphsizes and calls it -- "the caravilla". Another grandson, Ohad, saw the cooking oven being taken out of the storage container and asked what that was-and his mom explained that "now I can cook in our house and we can eat here". The three yr. old said -- but Ema -- will you be able to make "ketzitzot" like we always eat in the Ein Tzurim Guesthouse dining room in this "thing". Yesterday my son Aviel's kid three yr. old leaned on the electric pole immediately in front of their caravilla. The metal cover of access box that was apparantly not screwed on fell on him -- fortunately the someone noticed immediatey just as my grandchild was about to investigate what was in this interesting box that amazingly opened up in front of him (fortunately he wasn't hurt by the metal cover that fell on him). Last night five of the twelve families moving in had a little mezuzh placing ceremony -- we went from house to house and the last one prepared a Kibud. It was very moving as each told the story of the removal of the very same mezuzah that he was now attaching. Yitzchak Cohen told of how he begged the soldiers who came to take him out to tremove the mezuzah from the doorpost for him -- they all refused and one burst into bitter tears and cried "I can't, I can't". Amichai hung the same mezuzah that he is seen so painfully removing from his doorpost on the picture disk of Netzer Hazani that many have seen. I said to all, may we be Zoche to see these caravillas bulldozed soon as we will God willing succeed in building anew our more permanent home and agro-businesses very soon. Then one of the teenagers said - and this time we'll be happy to photograph the bulldozers that was so painful to photograph in Gush Katif. Perhaps my grandson is right perhaps we cannot call this site that was built for us without love and caring -- Habayit! Yet there have been so many wonderful caring people of Am Yisrael feom all over the world who have helped,visited and encouraged us constantly to enable us to make this temporary stay here more bearable. Their caring give the spurts of Koach to turn this "site"into our "home" even temporarily - as our "home" is still apparantly our spirit, values and community that we took out with us from Netzer Hazani, from Gush Katif and this is what we will use to make the Ein Tzurim caravilla site a great place to live -- temporarily Perhaps this what my young grandson had in mind by "Bayit". Shabbat Shalom,
Anita Tucker is a farmer. She and her family were evicted from their home in Gush Katif last August by the Sharon government. |
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POLLS: 70% OF ISRAELIS OPPOSE REALIGNMENT
Posted by Sarah N. Stern, June 23, 2006. |
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This is from Lenny Ben David at I*Consult. Contact him at BenDavid@i-consult.org or go to the website: www.i_consult.org |
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Surveys conducted for Avigdor Lieberman's Israel Our Home party show that some 70 percent of Israelis who backed last summer's Gaza disengagement object to West Bank withdrawal plan; only small percentage of respondents said they consider Peretz a success as defense minister Attila Somfalvi YNET (06.22.06, 23:17)
Two polls conducted for Avigdor Lieberman's Israel Our Home party showed that some 70 percent of Israelis are opposed to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's realignment plan. The polls, conducted by Shvakim Panorama under the supervision of American strategist Arthur Finkelstein, also revealed that some 65-70 percent of those who backed last summer's Gaza disengagement object to the West Bank withdrawal plan. In addition, the survey showed that 70 percent of Israelis who backed the Gaza pullout would have been against it today. According to the polls, about 80 percent of new Russian immigrants who voted for Kadima in the March elections now support Israel Our Home due to the fact that Olmert did not appoint Kadima MK Marina Solodkin to a cabinet post, which they view as an insult to the entire sector. The surveys showed that the Russian immigrant public would like to see Lieberman replace Olmert as prime minister; Likud chairman Benjamin Netanyahu followed Lieberman as the sector's choice for the position. 'New immigrants switching from Kadima to Israel Our Home' The polls also revealed that Labor is losing strength, with many of those who voted for Defense Minister Amir Peretz's party defecting to other parties. Senior Labor officials said certain disappointment can be detected among those who voted for the party in the last elections. Respondents viewed Olmert as a weak prime minister, and only a small percentage said they consider Peretz to be a success as defense minister. The vast majority of those who took part in the survey responded negatively to the question "do you feel safe in the country?" and Finkelstein said the reason this discontent has not been expressed in a major loss of mandates by both Kadima and Labor is attributed to the fact that no security-related catastrophe has occurred. "We can confirm that new immigrants are switching from Kadima to Israel Our Home, and a segment of the general public is leaving both Likud and Kadima for our party," an Israel Our Home official told Ynet. Sarah Stern is Founder and President, Endowment for Middle East Truth. Contact her at sstern@emetonline.org |
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TOYING WITH US DIPLOMATS; WHAT IRAQI GOVERNMENT?
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 23, 2006. |
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RESULT OF GAZA ABANDONMENT The Arabs smuggled more weaponry into Gaza in the eight months since Israel abandoned it, than in the prior 38 years. The Sinai is full of terrorist smugglers, whom Egypt does not apprehend (IMRA, 6/6 from head of Shin Bet, Israeli intelligence). The arms smuggling tunnels that Egypt never uncovered now are being used to sneak in millions of euros (IMRA, 6/7). Not so brilliant, was that abandonment and the one from Sinai. The head of Shin Bet states that Egypt does not have success in intercepting terrorists in the Sinai. I think Egypt does not want to intercept those whom it thinks are operating only against Israel and not against Egypt. Egypt considers Israel its primary enemy. PM Olmert considers Egypt a friend. Given Egypt's attitude, Olmert's is fatuous. CIVIL STRIFE IN P.A. More and more Arabs are getting shot by masked men. Forces from Fatah and Hamas attack each other and P.A. forces and facilities. Bystanders fall (IMRA, 6/6). DON'T IGNORE MUSLIM RANT Muslim threats against the West sound so bizarre, that Westerners they tend to ignore them. Ignoring them is a mistake. The Muslims take their rant seriously. They mean to do what they threaten. What we see as rant they see as roadmap. The foolish notion that office-holding breeds moderation in fanatics still is alive and mischievous. It did not work with Arafat, the Taliban, the Iranians, or the Assads. Equally foolish is the notion of respecting the Palestinian Arabs' "democratic," choice of a party that avows non-recognition of Israel and wants to destroy our democracy. HOW FOREIGN COUNTRIES TOY WITH U.S. DIPLOMATS When the leader of China planned to visit the US, his government withdrew charges against a prominent dissident seeking freedom for the country. The US thinks that China may be mellowing or at least wants to please the US. When the leader returned to China, however, the regime reinstated the charges. NY Times executives went to China to complain that its website was blocked. China unblocked the site and praised the newspaper. Afterwards the site was blocked again. Now China is punishing a member of the Times staff, but the newspaper blames the Bush administration for not having given the head of China a state dinner and for other minor gaffes. Who can trust the Times, which doesn't understand its own issue with China? (Kin-Ming Liu, NY Sun, 6/6, Op.-Ed..) U.S. CENSORSHIP Another associate just told me that his close friend saw the first 9/11 plane strike a tower and debris fly out. She got right back into the subway and took the next train uptown. His cousin worked in the tower. What he observed on the way out required psychiatric treatment to overcome. The worst scenes were not shown clearly to the public. Why? To spare scenes of horror for a public that flocks to horror movies? Not likely. My associate thinks the government strives to keep Americans from getting fed up with the Arabs. Why did the media go along with it? The State Dept. has much influence with what is called our free press. If a journalist or his editors displease the State Dept., the Dept. may not invite them to its briefings or clear them for entry to war zones. Supporting this belief: (1) The President's speech inaccurately exculpated the Arabs and Islam in general; (2) The government whisked prominent Saudi families out of the country; (3) The media basically did not report that celebrations took place all over S. Arabia and the P.A., upon hearing news of the 9/11 attack on America. Pres. Bush outsmarted himself. By not letting Americans realize who are our enemies, how much they hate us, and how vicious and deceptive they are, he undermined his own subsequent effort to lead a war on Islamism. Americans still don't realize fully what confronts them. Half the people think they need not confront it now. The censorship and self-censorship is not acknowledged or investigated. WHAT IRAQI GOVERNMENT? Why are Iraqis taking so long to form a government? How effective and useful will it be? Problem is, the government is being formed the Lebanese way. Each group vetoes the choices of the others, leaving inactive and incapable candidates offensive to no group. Some of the groups are Islamist or under Iranian or Syrian influence. The US also interferes constantly. The US often nominates poor candidates, and any competent ones would be suspected by the other groups of being under undue US influence. Despite Pres. Bush's progress reports, which are not reports of progress but unspecified claims of progress, the insurgency is growing. The middle class is squeezed. (Oil smuggling fuels insurgency.) Fatwas in Baghdad ban salads, on the grounds that cucumbers are male and tomatoes are female, and shouldn't mix! The formerly stable South is rising up, now, too, instigated by Iran. Who will put the insurgents down, when the insurgents have many friends in the government? We are losing, but cannot afford to lose (Nibras Kazimi, NY Sun, 6/6, Op.-Ed..) The US indulges in wishful thinking, Democrats shrug off thinking, and the enemy plans sensibly but for evil Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
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DANCING WITH TERRORISTS
Posted by Benjamin Svetitsky, June 23, 2006. |
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This statement is from Professors for a Strong Israel Even as the IDF is fighting against the terrorists of the Al-Aksa Martyrs' Brigade, which is part of the larger Fatah terror organization, Kadima's Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, is socializing with Abu Mazen, chairman of the Fatah. Further meetings are planned. Olmert persists in cultivating terrorist leader Abu Mazen, giving him guns that will be turned against Jews, while ignoring the savage terrorists he commands. Professors for a Strong Israel demands an end to the legitimacy and immunity enjoyed by these criminals, even if they know how to put on tailored suits and how to mouth proper platitudes for press conferences. Contact Benjamin Svetitsky at bqs@julian.tau.ac.il |
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A MORE SPECIFIC CRITIQUE OF HARVARD STUDY
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 23, 2006. |
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(Much as Harvard tried to disassociate itself from the Mearsheimer-Walt essay, "The Israel Lobby & US Foreign Policy," it remains known as the Harvard study.) New historian Benny Morris debunked much of the Harvard study in his analysis, "And Now For Some Facts." (Problem is, new historians are biased against Zionism and weak on facts, themselves.) Morris starts off agreeing with the Harvard denunciation of the Jewish nationalist militia, Irgun, as terrorist (which is about 99% false, and he doesn't admit that the socialist militia, Haganah, used thuggery against nationalist Jews.) Morris also agrees that Israeli troops committed atrocities in the war of 1948, without specifying any. (I don't believe him.) Morris analyzed the study's methodology. It misleads by key omission and distortion. To undermine the moral case for Israel, it claims that Israel had more troops and weaponry than the Arabs, in all their wars. That is a lie, as Morris proves. Nor does being the underdog, a role they falsely assign to the Arabs, confer legitimacy. The Arabs were the aggressors. In the current war, the Harvard duo cite the current disparity in size of armies and weaponry. This is misleading, too. Israel does not use its planes and tanks against the Arab people, whom it tries to spare. It uses them just against empty buildings and cars of terrorists. Therefore, they hardly should be counted. The terrorists fight from behind civilians in crowded areas, and try to kill primarily Israeli civilians most of whom are not armed as well as are the terrorists, giving terrorists a military advantage. (When they blow up an Israeli bus or café, their people celebrate. The P.A. signed a peace agreement!) Some moral superiority the Arabs have! (I think that trying to spare Arab lives is poor strategy. In battle, it gives the enemy deadly advantage. Overall, it leaves the enemy undefeated and able to fight on.) Then there is the old Arab propaganda notion that Israel drove the Arabs out, using the war as an excuse for doing what the Zionists always wanted to. Although some Zionists sometimes discussed this, they never proposed it and never made it policy, although at one time Britain did propose it. Desperate for a haven for world Jewry, the Zionist establishment accepted the partition of 1947. Morris outlines Zionist plans for development that assumed a large, continuing Arab minority. People who make such plans don't have a policy of expulsion. Indeed, the Haganah was ordered not to extend the war to areas whose local Arabs had not yet entered it. The hope was that they would not enter the war and would stay put. Haganah went on the offensive when Arab ambushes were strangling Jerusalem and other areas, and a foreign Arab invasion, for the announced purpose of genocide, was imminent. (The Harvard writers' indignation is not against the genocidal Arabs but against the Jews fighting for their people's lives). Morris discusses partition as if unaware that there earlier was another partition of Palestine. A poor historian, he is ignorant of what is "Palestine." The truth is that the Arabs did not and do not accept partition. That truth, the Harvard study does not acknowledge. Morris calls the notion of transfer of Arabs "awful." Had it been done, Israel would not now have a huge fifth column, one that tips the balance in Knesset votes in favor of the enemy. Had it been done in 1967, in some fashion, even by moderate measures, there would be less warfare possible against Israel, now. Many lives would have been saved, and security would be greater. I think not having transferred the Arabs was awful. Yes, Israel did not let most of the Arabs who fled, return. Morris defends that decision. Why let back in a genocidal enemy? Contrary to the Harvard study, those people were not innocent. In discussing the Camp David proposals, Mearsheimer and Walt claim that the P.A. was offered a "dismembered set of Bantustans." -- But witnesses say that PM Barak offered the P.A. 100% of Gaza and at least 90% of Judea-Samaria and functional control of part of eastern Jerusalem. After Arafat walked out, Pres. Clinton and Barak offered them about 95% plus other territory, and sovereignty over half the Old City and refugee assistance. Still the Arabs said goodbye, and rejected statehood. Other errors are buried in footnotes. One is the false claim that Britain favored the Zionists, during the Mandate. Apparently the Harvard scholars did not hear of the White Paper, internment only of Jewish immigrants, etc., to keep the Arabs a permanent majority, so there would be no Jewish State. Nor did they realize that Britain provisioned and advised the armies of three invading countries. Another false statement is that Israel passed classified information from Pollard to the USSR. The authors seem to leave no libel unstated. Still another lie is that Israeli citizenship is based on (Jewish) blood kinship. A fifth of Israel's citizens are Arabs. Resident applicants can become eligible for citizenship after five years. Jews are eligible for immediate citizenship, but Israel, after all, is a Jewish state, just as France is a French state. Incorrect is the claim that "The Arabs... had been in continuous possession of (Palestine) for 1,300 years. (It was for about 200 years, and not as a discrete country.) Did those scholars not know about the subsequent hundreds of years of Turkish rule? Population figures were incorrect, too, excluding most Jewish residents, bolstering the Arab claim. What poor, biased scholarship! (Jewish Political Chronicle, 5/2006). The authors reveal almost complete ignorance of Zionist history. They need a primer on it. There are good books. Their bibliography omits them. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
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SPEECH TO GANN ACADEMY CLASS OF 2006
Posted by Mordechai Ben-Menachem, June 23, 2006. |
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I have been assured that it really did occur. |
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Hello, Gann Academy class of 2006. It's wonderful to see you sitting here today, ready to graduate from high school. I've known some of you since you were in elementary school, and I'm very proud to look out at you now. Usually, commencement speeches urge seniors to go out into the world and commence their lives. The world is yours, go and make your way in it. My message to you today is different. The world that I would have wanted you to go out into is changing, and not for the better. As they say in The Hobbit, "Evil is abroad in the land." Our world, the world of tolerance and equal opportunity and respect, is under attack by a radical Islam that wants to destroy Israel and dominate Europe and then dominate America. So what I have to urge you to do today is not go out and make your way in the world, but go out and defend our culture, our civilization and our values. You and your families made the decision to attend Gann Academy rather than a public high school, and as a result, you are the most qualified high school graduates in America to undertake this task. Public high schools today are based on a multicultural view of the world, one in which all cultures are equally deserving of respect and honor, and in which it's considered bad ("racist" is the catch-all term) to criticize other cultures, to say that some are "good" and others are "bad," with the exception, however, of the Jewish and American cultures. It's not acceptable to criticize Cuba, where the secret police control all dissent, or Islamic countries, where women are oppressed and homosexuals are killed and Christians are imprisoned and people are beheaded for disagreeing. But it's fine to tell lies about Israel and to accentuate the negative about America and to hold Israel and America to standards that no other countries have to meet. But here at Gann we've taught you the opposite. We're not a multicultural school - we're a uni-cultural school. We've taught you that Judaism is important and beautiful; that it has taught the world its most important lessons: respect for law, respect for other people and tikkun olam. And that America was founded on those Jewish principles and is the highest expression in human history of respect for law and human rights and leading the world to make it a better place. And that Israel, which is facing incredible pressure and is outnumbered and is slandered and blamed for all the world's ills, is admirable for maintianing its high moral standards and is a model to the rest of the world for how to act. So when you go off to college, and your professors can't believe you actually went to a Jewish school and actually love Israel and actually think that America is a wonderful country, you'll be able to stand up to their anti-Zionism, their anti- Americanism, and their intolerance for ideas that aren't as radical as theirs, And you won't be afraid to say "this is right and this is wrong," "this is good and this is bad," and you'll be equipped to defend western culture, Jewish culture, American culture and Israel. And if you need help, call us. We'll be here to help you, as we always have been.
Joshua Katzen
Mordechai Ben-Menachem is at Ben-Gurion University. He can be reached by email at quality@computer.org |
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RESTRAINT IS NOT HEROISM
Posted by Nadia Matar, June 23, 2006. |
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With his article, "The Wailing of Sderot Compared to the Heroism of Gush Katif" (Hatzofeh, June 20, 2006), journalist & commentator Hagai Huberman joins a few of the deportees from Gush Katif with whom I spoke, all of whom express themselves more or less in the same vein: "The residents of Sderot are crybabies. Look how they're going mad in response to the Kassams falling on the city of Sderot. We in Gush Katif continued our routine lives, and we didn't wail over the Kassams that fell." I read and hear these things, and I just don't believe them. Do you want to tell us that you are proud of having continued the sacred "routine," without having cried out "We can't bear it?" Don't you think that the response by the inhabitants of Sderot is the normal reaction in light of the not-normal situation of mortar shells and Kassams falling on a civilian population, day after day? It is specifically the response of the residents of Sderot that is correct! Their message is clear: "It is inconceivable that daily life will go on in the country when the murderous enemy attacks civilians in an Israeli city. We will not remove the issue from the national agenda until the government will do something about this. Whether this is the cutting of electricity to Gaza or the razing of Beit Hanun from where the Arabs shoot- it doesn't matter what - we will not remain silent until you deal with the Arab enemy who is attacking us. This is the government's duty: to defend its citizens." These are the messages that are broadcast from Sderot. We will not enter into the debate regarding the type of protest (personally, I oppose hunger strikes and closing down the city under attack; in my humble opinion, instead of shutting down Sderot, Ramat Aviv and the vicinity of the Knesset in Jerusalem should be shut down by the Sderot residents and their supporters), but the bottom line is: the residents of Sderot have set out on a vociferous struggle. The fact that the media highlights several individuals who are willing to leave the city is irrelevant. We know that most of Sderot's residents are staying put, just as our brethren from Gush Katif did. The media always found in Gush Katif the one individual who announced that he was packing and leaving. So what? When the Gush Katif leadership and rabbis silenced our brethren in Gush Katif and lulled them to sleep, and prevented loud and vociferous protest, as a considerable part of them had demanded, they did an injustice, not only to Jewish morality (for how can one remain silent when Jews are attacked), they also did a great injustice to the struggle to save Gush Katif, and the entire settlement enterprise in general. When the victim remains silent, we cannot expect that anyone will come to his aid. No one interpreted the silence and restraint of the Gush Katif leadership as heroic. To the contrary, anyone who is silent when attacked, broadcasts the message that he does not deserve protection, that he admits that he is a second-class citizen, that his blood and the blood of his children doesn't count for as much as that of the inhabitants of Tel Aviv. Obviously, I know that this was not the intent of the leaders of Gush Katif, but as we see, the way to deportation is paved with good intentions. Who knows where we would be today if the Gush Katif leadership had screamed a resounding "We can't stand it any longer" already when the first mortar shell and the first Kassam fell? Who knows if things would not have turned out differently if the Gush Katif leadership and rabbis had acted as does Sderot's leaders, and exceeded all bounds to protest, to cry out, and - mainly - not to remain silent. And this should not be addressed only to the leaders and residents of Gush Katif. Where was the entire national camp; where were we all, when Kassams fell on Gush Katif or when Arabs killed our brethren in shooting attacks on the roads of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza? How did we dare continue our daily routine, as if this were a decree from Heaven about which nothing could be done? How was it possible that the leadership of the national camp and its rabbis did not demand that we put a complete stop to our everyday life, so we would not stand by while our brethren were murdered? Yes, it transpires that we all sinned the sin of the silence of the lambs. And, incidentally, we are still guilty of this sin of silence today - a silence that enabled the malicious government of destruction to carry out its wicked goal of deportation all the easier, without conscience pangs, and without the inhabitants of Israel and of the world sensing that a crime had been committed here. Thus, instead of leveling criticism at the "wailing" of our brethren from Sderot, I propose that we learn from them. Not only must we support them, we must ensure that, from now on, we, too, the residents of Judea and Samaria, who are candidates for ruin and deportation, must not be silent and carry on with our normal lives. Unlike the inhabitants of Sderot, who face only an Arab attack, we, the residents of Judea and Samaria, must contend with the double war that has been declared against us: the Government of Israel has joined together with the external enemies of Israel, and they act together to destroy the settlement enterprise in Eretz Israel - as a first step towards the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state and its transformation into a state of all its citizens. Accordingly, our protest, our outcry, and our struggle must be even more assertive and determined than the battle waged by the residents of Sderot. Our struggle is not one to save some settlement or other, it is a battle to save all of the Land of Israel. And so, we will go forth with a cry of fighting both Arab terror and the decrees of the internal foe - the Government of Israel. Yes, it is true, we will not win the sympathy of the media as is the case with Sderot, but it is a known psychological fact that someone who respects himself is respected. If we exhibit restraint, remain silent, and act as if "we look like grasshoppers to ourselves" (Num. 13:33), so we will look to them, and they will succeed in deporting us with ease. But if we struggle, already now, against every decree (starting with a determined and uncompromising struggle for each and every outpost [settlement]), and cry out over every terror attack, the authorities will begin to think of us as a force that does not intend to turn the other cheek, not to the Arabs, and certainly not to the "leftists." Ruth and Nadia Matar established Women For Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green), an activist group of women based in Jerusalem. Their website address is http://www.womeningreen.org |
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UJC HAS NOT HELPED THESE JEWS -- THANK G-D YOU WILL
Posted by Buddy Macy, June 22, 2006. |
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FRIENDS OF GUSH KATIF -- HELPING THE JEWISH REFUGEES REBUILD THEIR LIVES More than ten months after their tragic expulsion from Gush Katif and northern Samaria, most of the expellees still have not received the compensation promised them by the Israeli Government. And, the major American Jewish organizations, as a whole, have ignored their plight and welfare. Since the organized Jewish community is not assisting these needy Jews financially, we as individuals must provide the necessary aid. To that end, and as announced yesterday on the ZOA Middle East Report radio program (available at www.zoaphilly.org), I hereby announce the email launch of the Friends of Gush Katif Jewish Refugee Fund, from which 100% of the dollars raised will go directly to the expellees, through the registered 501C(3) charitable fund, "Friends of Gush Katif." I have created a campaign that will combine fundraising with a visual, moving, tangible tribute to the refugees. On August 1, 2006, the expellees will be commemorating the first anniversary of their expulsion. The largest of the commemorative events will take place at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, where most of the nearly 10,000 refugees from Gush Katif and northern Samaria are expected to be. Our brothers and sisters feel abandoned (and, rightly so), having been physically removed from their homes and land, and having not received substantial support from their brethren in Israel and here in America. My idea is to directly address this feeling of abandonment. We plan to produce a video that we intend to show on a giant television screen in Jerusalem during the commemoration ceremonies. Included on the video will be short greetings from donors of a minimum of $180* to Friends of Gush Katif, who will have emailed me a digital movie clip. Our goal is to have a 90-minute video filled from start to finish with best wishes to the expellees from their Jewish and Christian brothers and sisters around the world. If one does not have access to a video camera, he or she will be able to mail or email us a photograph to be included on the video, with a caption created underneath. The collection of greetings will be shown continuously in the background during the ceremonies, occasionally with the sound raised up high. This moving tribute to the former residents of Gush Katif and northern Samaria should prove to them that they have not been abandoned; that, quite to the contrary, they have many strong supporters in the United States and elsewhere who have renewed energy, passion and purpose in helping their brethren. I will provide you with frequent updates of the campaign and am sure that the leaders of the Jewish Federations in North America and other American Jewish leaders will be following its progress closely. The more dollars we raise, the more likely it would be that the UJC and other Jewish organizations allocate money for the refugees! For more information about the campaign, or to offer your welcomed assistance, please call toll-free: 800-BUDDY-NY (800-283-3969) from the United States or Canada. Outside North America, please call: 973-785-0057. Please forward this email to everyone on your list! Thanking you in advance for your most generous of support, Buddy Macy SEND CHECK TO: Friends of Gush Katif
Please write the following in the note section of your check: "We give generously!" Please email your video clip or photo to: vegibud@aol.com. *Please note: Gifts of any amount will be greatly appreciated!
Contact Buddy Macy at VegiBud@aol.com
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AL-ZAQARWI, JUST THE TIP OF THE SAND DUNE
Posted by Juda Engelmayer, June 22, 2006. |
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This article is by Neil Goldstein, who is the Executive Director of the American Jewish Congress. |
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U.S. preoccupation with events in Iraq tends to blind us to the storm that threatens critical American interests in the region and prevents us from understanding what needs to be done to prevent calamity. Israeli intelligence officials and Arab diplomats share a gloomy view of developments in the Middle East: a growing danger of Islamism and sectarian strife throughout the region. The assassination of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi must be understood as but one small victory in this larger conflict that threatens the vital national interests of the U.S. and of all of our Western and regional allies. In describing the danger, one Sunni Arab diplomat privately referred to what he calls a "pall" resulting from Arab concern over the impact of Iranian mischief against its neighbors. Among his fears: that oil-rich Bahrain, whose population is 70% Shia, soon will fall to Shiite radicals backed by Iran, and that Kuwait may not be far behind. Add to this the apparent loyalty to Iran of many Shiite groups in southern Iraq (an issue that has been discussed publicly by Egypt's President Mubarak). Then factor in the intimidating impact on Saudi Arabia of Iran's purported effort to build an atomic bomb and, even before success in that ultimate goal, their potential to use uranium enrichment to build a "dirty bomb." Finally add to the mix a potential uprising by Sunni Saudi Arabia's Shiite minority who reside precisely where that country's oil fields are located. The consequence, suggests this diplomat, is Iranian hegemony over the Persian Gulf and a stranglehold on the oil supply of the region. But, according to other Arab leaders, the Iranians are not the only threat to American interests. As a result of the Hamas victory in Palestinian Authority elections this past January the Moslem Brotherhood -- of which Hamas is the Palestinian branch -- has been emboldened throughout the region. In Jordan, where it is called the Islamic Action Front (IAF), it elected a pro-Palestinian leader in March, sworn to striking down Jordan's 1994 peace treaty with Israel. Meanwhile, Hamas itself has been caught smuggling arms into Jordan and planning terrorist acts. Because of the Muslim Brotherhood's capacity to undermine pro-Western Sunni governments, Iran shrewdly provides assistance to Hamas and to other elements of the Brotherhood, although it is a Sunni, rather than Shiite, movement. Elsewhere, conflict, rather than cooperation, is the norm between Shia and Sunnis, and enflames passions in the surrounding states, threatening to embroil them in the conflict. In Iraq, "takfiri" groups, such as al-Zarqawi's "Al Qaeda-in Iraq" which considers Shia to be apostates, or "kafirs," have declared open war against the Shia, as well as against the American "occupiers." Poised opposite these Sunni insurgents are Shiite militias accused of running secret prisons where they illegally hold Sunnis. Privately, Arab leaders warn that the continuing chaos in Iraq could draw in Iran, Turkey and other surrounding states, intent on protecting their own interests or the lives of their co-religionists or ethnic kinsmen. Already, there are signs of spill-over, such as the attempt to kill Hezbollah (Shiite) leader Nasrallah in nearby Lebanon, in retaliation for Shiite violence within Iraq. Perhaps most dangerous of all, Sunni leaders warn that the continuing sectarian violence in Iraq results in growing popularity for those groups that favor moral and material support to defend Sunnis in Iraq against what they see as Shiite domination and U.S. occupation. The outcome, ironically, is that these Sunni regimes find it more difficult to openly support the U.S. stance against Shiite Iran's nuclear ambitions. What makes these changes especially significant is that, in coming years, petroleum forecasters expect demand for oil to skyrocket just as worldwide production capacity peaks. Then, only the Middle East and Persian Gulf will have sufficient capacity needed to meet growing world demand, and any disruption of oil from this region would have disastrous consequences for the economies of the industrialized countries of the world. So, not only does our addiction to imported oil fund worldwide terrorism and pay for armies of our potential adversaries, it also leaves us vulnerable to a catastrophic interruption or interdiction of supply. So what needs to be done to avoid the calamity? First, the U.S. must bolster friendly regimes in the region imperiled by the growing power of radical forces, assisting them with border security and with the capacity to compete against groups that, in imitation of Hamas, are providing social services to the poor of their countries. Second, the U.S. must do everything in its power to end sectarian violence in Iraq, to make it easier for the Arab nations of the region to unite behind U.S. efforts to contain Iran. Forward-thinking leaders like Jordan's King Abdullah have put forth their own initiatives from within Islam to end this sectarian conflict. Privately, Arab proposals for what the U.S. might do include inviting Iran, Turkey and other surrounding states to take a more active role (a proposal that is likely to engender skepticism in the U.S. and active opposition from the Kurds) and a more active U.S. peace-keeping role in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians (equally likely to meet with skepticism given the victory of Hamas and the perceived weakness of President Abbas). Third, the U.S. must insist that Arabs become part of what until now has been an enterprise of the U.S., EU, Russia and a reluctant China to end Iran's nuclear weapon ambitions. The Arab states have much at stake and much to offer in resolving this problem. Fourth -- and perhaps most important of all -- the U.S. and the West must make a maximum effort to find a solution to the energy dilemma, since the only way to reduce dependence on this region is to end dependence on imported oil. Juda Engelmayer is with the American Jewish Congress News Bureau. Contact him at American.Jewish.Congress@AJCongress.org |
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HOW MUCH SHOULD MORAL HIGH GROUND COST?
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 22, 2006. |
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Haim Watzman's "Hiding behind the Enemy" (NY Times, 6/22/06) is pernicious in what it omits. Watzman craves the smug satisfaction of being able to tell the world that his country has captured the moral high ground. But in his convoluted assessment of how and why Israel must do that, he fails to answer two critical questions: a.) How high a price in human lives must Israel pay for this high ground? The Price: The use of local Palestinians as "pointers" saved lives, both Israeli and Palestinian. With such assistance no longer available, the use of bulldozers to break down walls now saves lives, but destroys property. So Watzman suggests that "... some terrorists will get away, and sadly, ... more soldiers will die" is an acceptable price to pay for the moral high ground of no bulldozers in the pursuit of terrorists. But either Watzman is myopic, or he hopes that his readers are. The cost of that moral high ground is far greater than more soldiers dying, as if that were not enough. More Israeli civilians will die as well, as the escaped terrorists kill again before they are apprehended. Reducing Israel's ability to apprehend terrorists, de facto helps the terrorists. It therefore prolongs the terror war and emboldens more terrorists to more terror. So Watzman's moral high ground will also cost the lives of civilians who will be killed by other terrorists and terrorist wannabees emboldened by Israel's apocopated ability to pre-empt, apprehend and retaliate. The Casualties: With the use of bulldozers, the casualties in an Israeli army pursuit of terrorists are the homes destroyed, and the potential for civilian injury or death if the residents ignore the army's orders to leave the house. Without the use of bulldozers, the casualties are:
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NINE months ago, Israel's Supreme Court forbade the Israeli Army to use civilians as human shields when it raided houses to arrest Palestinian combatants. Last week the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the consequence of the ruling has actually been to place Palestinian civilians in greater danger. Instead of soldiers entering houses to find their targets, the army is using bulldozers to knock the houses down. The army of a democracy fighting an insurgency -- Israel in the West Bank, like the United States in Iraq -- faces tough choices. Its government requires it to observe rules of war intended to protect the rights and lives of civilians. At the same time, commanders must protect their soldiers. The two imperatives often conflict. When I served as an Israeli infantry reservist in the West Bank in the 1980's and 90's, sometimes my company would be sent to apprehend a terrorist. Under the direction of an agent from the Israeli counterterrorism agency, Shin Bet, we'd surround and then raid the house where the man was believed to be hiding. We usually had a Palestinian to help us. He was called "the pointer," because his job was to enter the house with us and identify the man we were after. He was a collaborator -- a Palestinian serving the Israeli cause. We soldiers were not permitted to talk to him, but we had heard enough stories to know that while he might have been helping our side of his own free will, he might also have been coerced. Most of my friends hated going on these raids. They were both dangerous and unpleasant, because the house we were raiding was always a family's home. We'd surround the house and break in after midnight, waking everyone inside. Women would scream, children cry. As often as not, the man we were after had been tipped off and fled. If he was there, it was worse, because he'd be armed and dangerous. And the last place a soldier wants to get into a shooting match is in a small, constricted space where he can't see well, can't take cover and can't know whether there are more enemies waiting in the next room. The pointer made some of us feel safer. It seemed logical that the terrorist would hold his fire if he saw that he might hit a Palestinian. We used Palestinian civilians for other tasks as well. If we discovered that the boys in the village we were patrolling had jury-rigged a roadblock out of boulders during the night, we'd grab some nearby civilians and order them to dismantle it. This was partly an act of collective punishment, but there was also a safety factor involved. If the roadblock was booby-trapped, they'd get hurt instead of us. I always felt queasy about using civilians to protect us. It didn't seem to me that we had the right to put someone else's life in danger to protect our own. I voiced my reservations on occasion, but nothing changed. Sometime during the years that followed, the pointer and roadblock clearers evolved into something even more questionable: the human shield. Soldiers who had to raid a house or patrol a dangerous stretch of road would grab a nearby civilian and place him in front of them. Unlike the pointer, this civilian had no function other than to protect Israeli soldiers. According to Btselem, the Israel Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, the practice was not a grassroots initiative. It was an army policy, handed down to soldiers by their superior officers. The routine became much more widespread in April 2002, when Israel reoccupied the West Bank in response to a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings and other acts of violence against Israeli civilians. In August of that year, a Palestinian man, Nidal Abu Mohsen, was killed while serving as a human shield. Israeli human rights organizations filed suit to halt the practice, and last October, the Supreme Court handed down its ruling banning its use. Many in the army were upset. They felt they had been robbed of a tool that made their jobs safer, and which helped the commanders protect the lives of their soldiers. But morality in combat is not just an abstract principle. It is an element of an army's strength. It is also essential to the society that sends the army into battle. If the safety of soldiers becomes the standard according to which an army designs its missions, the army will not have the courage to take risks. An army that does not take risks will be easily beaten by an opponent that does. So it's not unreasonable -- in fact, it's essential -- for a society to demand that its army observe moral standards, even if the price to be paid is that more soldiers will be killed. But sometimes eliminating one morally questionable practice opens the door to others. Once the Israeli Army banned the use of human shields, it had to come up with another way of extracting the Palestinian guerrillas from their hideouts. Hence the bulldozer. Of course, this method is much more dangerous for the family inside. Israel can't stop hunting down its enemies. As long as there is no peace agreement with the Palestinians, the Jewish state must protect itself and its civilians. Can it do so without bulldozing houses that harbor terrorists? Certainly it can. Raiding a house is a dangerous operation, but good intelligence, proper planning and careful execution can, in most cases, reduce the risk to a reasonable level. Commanders must be prepared to adapt their tactics to a range of constraints: terrain, weather, the training and equipment of their troops, and the enemy's positions, to name a few. In some cases, the risk may be too great and the operation may be canceled or postponed until the next opportunity comes around. Good commanders don't give the enemy quarter, but they also don't send the Light Brigade charging unprotected at the enemy's guns. Laws and moral rules are another set of constraints. Soldiers sometimes chafe at them because, unlike hills and bullets, they seem like artificial and unnecessary barriers. In a purely military sense, armies could better do their jobs if they could ignore the civilians on the battlefield. But we don't allow them to ignore civilians. And truth be told, I've never met a soldier who thinks armies ought to be able to maim and kill civilians with impunity. When the Supreme Court banned the use of human shields, army commanders looked for another way to succeed with minimum risk. They decided on the bulldozer. Getting rid of the bulldozer may well mean that some terrorists will get away, and sadly, that more soldiers will die. But in the final analysis, Israel and its soldiers will not be less secure. They will occupy the high ground, and that is the most secure place to be. David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com |
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OLMERT HINTS AT PULLOUT OF SHILO, BEIT EL, OFRA, KEDUMIM
Posted by Bryna Berch, June 22, 2006. |
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This was written by Amir Mizroch and it appeared in the Jerusalem
Post today |
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Thursday hinted that the settlements of Shilo, Beit El, Ofra and Kedumim would be evacuated under his unilateral withdrawal plan, and said that many other settlements in the West Bank would be also be evacuated. "Shilo, Beit El, Ofra and Kedumim were always part of the historical Land of Israel, and they always emotionally will be," Olmert said in a conversation with Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel at the Petra Nobel Laureates Conference in Jordan. "We, Israelis, Jews, firmly and deeply believe that this Land of Israel from the Jordan River to the [Mediterranean] Sea has always been our heritage. We will always have a right to this land. Our history, and not that of the Palestinians, is buried underneath this land," the Prime Minister said. Israel, Olmert said, would have to make a choice of whether to continue living in places where Israelis would never be separated from the Palestinians and which would make the Israeli-Palestinian conflict "endless", or to live in "a part of this land" so that Israelis would be able to live "in partnership" with a contiguous Palestinian state. Settlers, Olmert added, would have to make a "personal choice" whether they wanted to live in a Jewish state or a Palestinian state. "The settlers can decide they would rather live on this particular piece of land, and that is [their] choice," Olmert said. 
Responding to Olmert's comments, Nobel Laureate Robert Aumann, a staunch settlement supporter, told The Jerusalem Post that, given the choice, he would remain on land vacated by Israel in the West Bank under Palestinian sovereignty if his safety was guaranteed by the Palestinian Authority. Aumann, who lives in Jerusalem, added that he would encourage other settlers to do the same. "I will live in a Palestinian state if my life is assured by the Palestinian Authority, and I call on others to do the same if their security is assured. If it cannot be assured, then there is no peace. If we have hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, Arabs living in Israel, and we cannot have Israelis living in the land of the [Palestinian] Authority, then there is no peace," Aumann said. Challenged by Aumann, who called Olmert's convergence plan a "crime against humanity," Olmert responded that the majority of Israelis were in favor of "painful compromises that would put an end to the conflict." "I will pull out from territories, not from every inch, I have no commitment to the boundaries [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas] Abu Mazen is demanding [a withdrawal to the 1967 lines]. This we will negotiate and I will make compromises. There will be blocs of settlements that cannot be evacuated. And there will be many, many settlements vacated by Israel which would give the Palestinians territorial contiguity in which they can realize their dream of a Palestinian state," Olmert said. |
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THE BODIES ON THE BEACH
Posted by Ratowitz, June 22, 2006. |
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Let's take part in the Israeli effort to explain the incident in the Gaza beach against the criminals from the Palestinian side and the Israeli left wing "freedom fighters". Please distribute this e-mail as widely as you can. The English version is below. |
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1.How could it be that at the scene of the incident there was a cameraman from the start to finish, and the quality of the pictures could have it him a prize as photographer of the year? 2. As a former soldier who has fired artillery before I can say that if artillery fire was the cause of this incident you would have seen a huge crater, but no picture of the incident shows this. 3. Pay attention to the crying of the girl, the people who pick up the sheets, the arrival of the stretcher. The photographer had to be just a few meters away to be able to get such high quality pictures. 4. There were claims of seven killed, and the pictures passed around show the girl crying next to her father's body. Where are the other dead bodies? Did they leave the body of the father for the cameraman to be able to take pictures of a girl crying next to it? 5. That same girl that was crying right after the incident explains to all the foreign news organizations professionally the whole timeline and information about what happened during the incident on the beach without even crying. Would such a young girl who had just experienced a big trauma really be able to do that? 6. They show Ismail Hiniya (Hamas terrorist leader) visiting injured in the hospital. For there to be seven deaths and dozens of injured in such a open field, on a sandy field, you need a round with a explosive head of at least 20kg - the Israeli navy warships on the coast of Gaza do not have such rounds. 7. In one of the pictures you can see something that looks like a metal plate next to the girl, similar to such a structure found in land mine. 8. Because the probability of IDF artillery having been fired is almost zero, in order to kill a whole family you would need to have a sniper kill each one, one by one. No Israeli soldier would do so. 9. The rounds used by the Israeli navy are 76mm and their aim is targeted destruction of buildings. The effect of them on sand is very small, because it is sandy and a wide open space. 10. Add to all of this the fact we are dealing with one of the most corrupted, dark and lying regimes of the world that has a history of great information campaigns, and you will see that this whole incident was one great act by the PA yet again. Contact Ratowitz at ratow@bezeqint.net |
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FEDERAL JEW-PURGE CONTINUES; POOR IDF STRATEGY; PUNISHMENT FOR P.A. VOTE OR PRECAUTION?
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 22, 2006. |
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FEDERAL JEW-PURGE CONTINUES A middle-aged State Dept. employee and former CIA agent is undergoing a lengthy, hostile review of his security clearance, simply for having been a Volunteer for Israel in his youth. Foreign Jews volunteer for a 2 ½-week stint of menial work on an Israeli army base, to relieve the troops. It expresses solidarity but also provides free transportation. The agent since then distanced himself from Israeli relatives, one being in intelligence. But the US acts as if any old connection with Israel were suspicious (NY Sun, 6/6). I find the US suspicion grounds for suspicion. This same government invites Arabs to translate terrorist documents, after having found deliberate mistranslation by Arabs. Security is a problem. The Soviets used to get free information from radicals, paid mercenary-minded military officers for intelligence, blackmailed homosexual agents, and sexually compromised married male agents who egotistically assumed that beautiful Russian women simply happened by and fell for them. Contemporary journalists often reveal classified information, sometimes of use to the enemy in battle. On the other hand, the government classifies far too much data, some of it already in the public domain or sometimes just to cloak embarrassment. Then it leaks selected data for political purposes. The US forfeits some criminal prosecution of terrorists and spies, lest it offer insight into counter-terrorism. Terrorists transmit training manuals and mission instructions via Internet. One Jew spied for Israel and but not against the US. He revealed intelligence that US agencies had agreed to give Israel but secretly and contrary to official policy withheld, as if it wanted heavy Israeli casualties in the next Arab war. This intelligence agency subversion never was investigated. Neither was State Dept. failure to screen the 9/11 terrorists. How patriotic is our government? The government's witch hunt for subversive Jews goes too far, reflecting ignorance and prejudice selectively against Jews. It seems like an attempt to repress general support for Israel and to conceal US subversion of Israel. IDF PREDICTION The IDF is reconfiguring itself in order to face what it foresees as an escalation of warfare from the P.A., regardless of more Israeli withdrawals (IMRA, 6/5). It should have pointed out that withdrawal facilitates escalation and that the government and Supreme Court forbid any use or full use of certain effective methods against terrorism. Instead of plumping for P.A. statehood, Israel needs a strategy for winning, as by making Arab P.A. residency non-viable and by annexing parts of the Territories unsettled or deserted by Arabs. The Arabs must be made to feel defeated and hopeless. PUNISHMENT FOR P.A. VOTE OR PRECAUTION? The EU still is telling Israel not to punish the P.A. people for their electoral choice. Israel's Foreign Min. Livni said that Israel favors a "two-state solution" and will not comment about the proposed P.A. referendum on the prisoners' "solution" (IMRA, 6/5). The choice was terrorism. Withholding some money otherwise remitted to the P.A. is more of a precaution against terrorism than a punishment. Put it the other way. When Israel funds the P.A., that seeks to conquer it, is it sane? Actually, the electoral choice was between terrorist parties. Israel should have withheld the funds long before. This is war, not a matter of expressing displeasure over a vote, a vote that did not change the Arab goal, which always has been to destroy Israel. Actually, Israel still is giving money to the P.A., though less. So is everybody else, while pretending to be high-minded as if giving only "humanitarian aid." That is like scooping manure, perfuming one's hands, and calling them sanitary. The terrorists want to destroy Israel. IDF intelligence confirms the obvious, that the P.A. intends to escalate against Israel. By what rationale does the Foreign Minister of Israel call conferring statehood upon the imperialist P.A., a "two-state solution"? The prisoners' plan is another scheme for destroying Israel. As usual, the world pretends that an Arab plan for conquest is a peace plan. By not commenting about it, Israel lets the pretense proceed, against Israel's interest in survival. The Israeli government acts as if it does not have an interest in surviving. It takes great restraint not to call the Israeli ruling elite the most stupid people imaginable, in policy after policy, and action or inaction after action and inaction. Israel's blunders are flagrant, but the world, in this modern age of miscommunication and prejudice keeps praising Israel's movement towards destruction. I've never seen or read anything like it. WAR PROTEST Members of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka demonstrate at funerals of gay Iraq veterans. Their signs read "God Hates Fags" and they thank God for the roadside bombs that kill them. States are banning demonstrations at funerals. The family that held one such disrupted funeral is suing the group for invasion of privacy (NY Sun, 6/6, p.6). As a matter of policy, I think the war justified, but recognize a right to protest against it. As a personal matter, I disapprove of homosexuality. But I think that those Baptists carry their disapproval of homosexuality beyond the bounds of the decency they think they are upholding. Bereaved parents should not be insulted. Their sons gave their lives to protect the rest of us. We should be respectful and thankful, not judge someone exclusively by some personal preference we may dislike. PRAISING THE ENEMY The State Dept. praised Abbas for his proposed referendum as indicating he wants two states (IMRA, 6/6). Implication: this would end the conflict with Israel. It would not. Jihad does not get settled by territorial concession. The purpose of getting the territory is to gain proximity to Israel, the better to attack it, and to deprive Israel of strategic borders and depth and water. It would be like praising Delilah for solving Samson's conflict with the Philistines (no relation to the Palestinian Arabs), by marrying him and clipping his long hair. The hair was the reputed source of his strength. Fool he was for consorting with the enemy and then not killing her when he told her first that something else gave him strength and she clipped that. (Gaza was Israel's warning.) HAMAS' USE OF SELF-DECLARED CEASEFIRE Hamas is training and arming. Its researchers are striving to integrate toxic materials into its bombs. (Give those Arabs humanitarian aid?) It is accumulating enough explosives so that as soon as the order is given to resume fire, it can mount many, powerful attacks. Some of its cells actually have been attacking, but do not claim responsibility in the name of Hamas (IMRA, 6/6). This is the traditional Muslim use of cease-fires,to develop the means for escalating when fighting resumes. Hamas gives rockets to other organizations, so that Hamas can pretend that it is not part of the continuing warfare. There is blood on the very Hamas lips that deny committing ongoing terrorism. P.A. ISLAMIC JIHAD FORESEES VICTORY Palestinian Islamic Jihad claims that terrorism has inhibited Jewish immigration to Israel and caused emigration. He quoted the granddaughter of former PM Begin as having moved to the US, because Israel does not safeguard its people (IMRA, 6/6). She is right. The government should wipe out the terrorists, instead of acting primarily to conserve enemy lives. THE ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER & THE COWARD Three terrorists dressed in Egyptian Army uniforms crossed into Israel and opened fire on an Israeli patrol. The patrol killed two. In a meeting with Pres. Mubarak of Egypt, Israeli PM Olmert said he was moved at sitting next to the great Mubarak, to whom he apologized. He told the Army not to let this happen again. The Israeli commanders were disgusted. They should put Olmert on trial (Winston Mid East Analysis, 6/6) -- he's the coward. Mubarak probably finds him contemptible. What should the IDF do, let its men be killed by infiltrators? Egypt should be asked not to let this happen, again. |
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WHO ARE THE MAJORITY OF ISRAELIS?
Posted by Aryeh Zelasko, June 22, 2006. |
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These are points I have been trying to bring to the attention of people for a number of years. It is time to recognize the truth of all this. Furthermore, the real goal of the Oslo treason has been to prevent the emergence of a religious, political majority that will replace the anti-Torah establishment with loyal Jews. There is a point I would like to make here that will anger many. The real divide in Israel is not religious-secular. It is those who are loyal to the Jewish people and those who are not. Loyalty to the Jewish people involves living within Jewish culture and history. It can not be accomplished by living as an outsider to the culture and history of our people, loyal to the cultural and historical values of a foreign people. Ask yourself: Who are your real heros? When confronted with a serious problem, whose life and actions inspire you and set the example you would like to imitate? What would you be willing to sacrifice your life for? What would you be willing to sacrifice the lives of your children and family for? In short, what are you values? Are they Jewish or not? If your values are not Jewish how can you be loyal to the Jewish people? Those who spread the establishment's propaganda of a secular (anti-Torah) majority are either willing lackeys of that establishment or fools. In either case, whom they are should be noted by all loyal Jews and every effort should be made to remove them from any positions of responsibility in the community. Anyone who actively or passively aids this Government of betrayal must be openly criticized and scorned by all those loyal to the Torah and the Jewish people. The final point made in this article that; "The first leader or political party that learns how to tap into the 'real majority' will easily change the face of Israel." is critical. I have, in the past, attempted to explain this to political activists and would be leaders. The unfortunate reality is that nearly every person involved in the Israeli political process wants the system to continue as is. Their interest is only to personally profit from the system and not to advance the cause and interests of the Jewish people. Ultimately it is the real majority that must decide whom to follow. My advise is look carefully at the personal and public values of any wannabe leader. Does he display the absolute and total loyalty to our people, culture and history we desperately need today or is he just another opportunist? Choose a leader who is more loyal than you are not less! This article was written by Yoel Meltzer and it appeared today in Arutz Sheva - IsraelNationalNews.com. It is archived at http://www.israelnationalnews.com/article.php3?id=6325 |
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There is a widespread belief amongst the members of Israel's national-religious community that the Israeli government represents the majority of Israeli Jews. This way of thinking is so prevalent that it affects both layman and rabbi alike. A clear example of this can be seen in a pamphlet, written by leading national-religious rabbis, which was distributed a few weeks ago throughout synagogues in Israel. Although arguably an admirable attempt to build some consensus in the face of threatened future withdrawals, nonetheless, the pamphlet reveals the rabbis' belief, with such statements as "a minority cannot impose its views on the majority." In other words, the minority (the faith-minded public that cares about Torah, the Land of Israel and the People of Israel) cannot impose its views on the majority of Israeli Jews, since the majority, via the electoral process, chose Ehud Olmert and his Kadima party. However, what many of the signatories to this pamphlet, as well as many in the national-religious camp in general, fail to understand is that this so-called majority is nothing but a fabrication of the ruling establishment. In other words, via the use of the media, the establishment has managed (already for many years) to implant the belief in the public that they represent the majority of Israelis. Thus, even when opposing the views of the ruling establishment, there is an accepted belief that 'we are the minority' and 'they are the majority'. Moreover, since it is accepted that they represent the majority, there is a constant attempt to be liked by the establishment. This way of thinking has unfortunately guided, and still guides, many of the good-intentioned members of the national-religious camp. If it doesn't stop, then the tragedy of last summer in Gush Katif will be nothing compared to the awaiting tragedy. My question is: Has anyone ever checked this notion of who are the majority of Israelis (a demographic question), or who represents them (a political question), rather than accepting it as a divinely-given fact? On a political level, an analysis of Israel's elections for the past 30-plus years presents a very interesting picture ( the following statistics can be found on the web site of the Israeli Knesset). Starting with the most recent elections in March, for Israel's 17th Knesset, as everyone knows Kadima received the most votes. However, has anyone bothered to notice that of all the eligible voters (of which, more than 35% chose not to vote), Kadima received roughly 15% of the votes? Or to turn this statistic on its head, of all the eligible voters, roughly 85% did not vote for Ehud Olmert and his Kadima party. If we analyze the elections this way, then even Ariel Sharon and his Likud party during the landslide victory in 2003 managed to receive only 20% of the votes (once again, of all the eligible voters, many of whom chose not to vote). Although obviously better than Ehud Olmert and his Kadima party, roughly 80% of all the eligible voters did not vote for Ariel Sharon and his Likud party. In fact, analyzing the election results this way for the past 30-plus years will show conclusively that no one party has ever come close to receiving a majority of all eligible votes. Even the biggest winner, when analyzed this way, only received roughly 30% of all eligible votes (this being the Alignment back in 1973). True, Israel is a parliamentary democracy (sort of), so the largest winner in the elections has usually managed to form some sort of governing coalition. However, these coalitions and their ensuing policies invariably have nothing to do with the wishes or desires of the majority of Israelis, but rather are based upon (for the most part) a bunch of opportunists joining together to get access to, and control of, the various sources of power in this country. Turning to the demographic picture, there is the accepted notion that the majority of the Jews in Israel are secular and that therefore, the religious minority (to quote the pamphlet mentioned above) "cannot impose its views on the majority." However, similar to the "political majority" discussed above, the accepted "demographic majority" is also quite deceptive. An article published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, "How Religious are Israeli Jews?" (by the late Professor Daniel Elazar), cuts through this assumption. Although based on statistics from 1993 and therefore a bit outdated, this article is nonetheless still relevant in that it clearly shows that the accepted demographic notion is far from the truth. Without going into all the details, it shows that nearly 25% of the Jews living in Israel define themselves as 'religious' (Hareidi, national-religious, etc.), while another 55% define themselves as 'traditional' (mainly Sephardim). Although it is true that amongst the individual Jews that fall within these two groups there can be found a wide range of religious differences (both in observance and outlook), nonetheless nearly all have some affinity for the Jewish tradition, the Torah, the Land of Israel, etc. Moreover, when viewed this way, the secular Jewish population comprises a mere 20% of all the Jews living in Israel. Thus, rather than being the majority (as is commonly assumed), the secular Jewish population in Israel is, in fact, the minority. To summarize: a) the largest political parties in Israel do not represent the majority of Israeli Jews; and b) the overwhelming majority of Jews in Israel define themselves as either religious or traditional. Given these facts, it should be clear that the national-religious public has to stop viewing the establishment as representing the majority and stop trying to be liked by them; rather, they should go on the offensive with their ideas since they, and not the establishment, are connected to the majority of Jews. The first leader or political party that learns how to tap into the 'real majority' will easily change the face of Israel. Aryeh Zelasko lives in Beitar Illit, south of Jerusalem. He is Director of Sales and Marketing of Israel Visit (www.israelvisit.co.il) which provides information and an internet buying facility for American visitors to Israel. |
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MORE ON THE JUDICIAL WAR AGAINST FREEDOM OF SPEECH IN ISRAEL
Posted by Steven Plaut, June 22, 2006. |
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The following is an English translation of an article by Jonathan Rosenblum that appeared in hebrew today in Maariv, June 22, 06. |
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Free speech for some At the height of the American civil rights movement, Southern strategists hit on a novel strategy to bankrupt civil rights organizations and their leaders: libel suits to be tried before local juries in states like Alabama. The U.S. Supreme Court put an end to that strategy in 1964 by making it almost impossible for a public figure to sue for libel absent a showing of knowing falsehood or reckless disregard for the truth. (That matters of opinion were beyond the reach of libel law did not even need stating.) Protection of free speech in Israel lags far behind the America, especially when it comes to libel suits. Last year Tommy Lapid was smacked with a 50,000 shekel libel judgment for calling an astrologer a "charlatan" on TV. Lapid was not making a comment on the professional skill of the astrologer in question, but rather expressing his opinion that astrology is hokum. He may have been impolite, but he is entitled to his opinion. Recently inveterate Israel-basher Niv Gordon succeeded in turning Nazareth Magistrate's Court into Israel's Alabama when he successfully sued Haifa University economics professor Steven Plaut for libel. Gordon's choice of venue was hardly accidental. He lives in Jerusalem and Plaut in Haifa; he sought a venue with a strong likelihood of a judge who would share his politics. Gordon exercises his free speech rights to the fullest. His attacks on Israel's "fascism" and "state terror," as well as praise for Norman Finkelstein, who has been dubbed the Jewish David Irving, feature on various neo-Nazi, Islamist, and anti-Semitic websites. He once wrote a letter to Ha'aretz justifying Palestinian violence as the only language then Prime Minister Ehud Barak understands. Gordon has labeled Gaza Brigade Commander Gen. Aviv Kochavi a "war criminal," as a result of which Kochavi was advised not to take up advanced studies in Britain for fear of war crimes prosecution. Gordon can dish it out, but he cannot take it. And in Judge Reem Nadaff he found an unwitting accomplice in suppressing the speech of those contemptuous of his antics. Naddaf found Prof. Plaut's forwarding (not writing) of a satiric E-mail of condolence to Gordon upon the targeted killing of Hamas bomb-maker Mohammed Def. She also found to be libelous Plaut's description of Gordon's academic publications to be paltry, even though it was true at the time of publication, because he had not removed those articles from various websites. Most of Judge Nadaff's opinion was taken up by discussion of the headlines of two pieces by Plaut -- one entitled "Haaretz supports Jews for Hitler;" the other "Judenrat for Peace." In the first article Plaut attacked Ha'aretz for picking Gordon to review Norman Finkelstein's The Holocaust Industry and then printing his laudatory review. Finkelstein claims that the number of those killed in the Holocaust is "grossly exaggerated," as part of a systematic manipulation by world Jewry to deflect criticism of Israel's "racist" and "Nazi" treatment of Palestinians. Plaut claimed that the headline in question was tacked on by an editor, and in, any event, the title does not mention Gordon. The "Jews for Hitler" of the title most plausibly referred to Finkelstein, as head of a metaphorical club of Jewish supporters of Hitler. The second article savaged Gordon for violating army orders by entering Yasir Arafat's Ramallah compound, along with 250 members of International Solidarity Movement to serve as human shields for Arafat. Gordon was photographed holding hands with Arafat, and quoted as dismissing charges that Arafat ordered and financed terror attacks on Israel. Again, the Judenrat title did not mention Gordon by name. Nor could the article be plausibly read as an assertion that Gordon was an ally of Hitler in his plans to destroy the Jewish people, as Judge Naddaf seemed to. Rather Plaut was engaging in a Holocaust metaphor: Just as during the Holocaust the Judenrat assisted in the killing of their fellow Jews, so do Gordon and his ilk today. That is no more or less legitimate an opinion than those that Gordon spews around the world. And the attempt to suppress it reflects the way that free speech in Israel often applies to only one side of the political spectrum. Afterword: Maariv this morning also reports that the Judge Ayala Procaccia, who was the subject of the Caroline Glick article I posted yesterday (www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1150355527747&pagename= JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull), due to her politicized verdict against the free speech of protesters who opposed the Gush Katif capitulation, has been receiving death threats. Procacia had jailed teenage girl protesters for weeks until their hearing came up in court. Let me emphasize that I am strongly opposed to violence or threats against any Israeli judge or against any other public figure, even against leftist politicized judges, even against a judge who would rule that treason is protected speech while criticism of treason is "slander". Having said that, let me also add that there is a serious problem in Israel. When judges issue biased, one-sided, politicized rulings that suppress freedom of speech, they violate the social contract of democracy. They may drive certain hot heads to conclude that since courts are unwilling to defend democracy, the rules of the democratic game are off. In other words, anti-democratic rulings by politicized biased judges can produce violence! And the judges themselves must bear part of the responsibility for that. See also www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=
1150885825806&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist,
a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author
of "The Scout." He frequently comments -- both seriously and
satirically -- on Israeli politics and the left wing academic
community. His website address is
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TWO ARTICLES ON MOSLEM ANGER
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 21, 2006. |
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From the articles below we learn that Moslems have been angry at the USA at least since 1967. They are angry when we intervene, and they are angry when we don't intervene. They are angry because we stay (Iraq); but they were angry when we left prematurely (Afghanistan after the defeat of the russians and before the Taliban took over). They are angry that we collaborate with undemocratic oppressive totalitarian tyrannical rulers, but they don't seem to notice that there have been nothing but undemocratic oppressive totalitarian tyrannical rulers in most of the Moslem (and all of the Arab) world since long before the USA came in to being. They are angry with us because we support Israel, but they don't seem to notice that if we did not support Israel, we would be de facto supporting the second genocide of almost half of world Jewry. They are angry with us because we send billions of dollars to israel, but they astutely and consistently and unflinchingly ignore the massive billioins of aid and food that we have supplied almost every Moslem nation in the world since world war 2.....and they conveniently ignore the fact that these same Moslem nations harbour and support and cheer the efforts of their own terrorists to destroy us. They are angry with us because of "what is going on overseas"; but they don't seem to notice that most of what is going on overseas is the murderous violence of Moslem against Moslem. They are angry with us because of what they are taught by their "do-it-yourself" Islamic teachers; but they don't seem to notice that these "....uneducated scholars (who) are bending the peaceful word of the Koran to suit their violent ideology...." are teaching the same ideology that has been the mainstream practice of Moslems against non-Moslems, and Moslems against Moslems, for 1,300 years across the entire Moslem world......so how are those 'do it yourself' teachers any different from those who have been teaching normative Islam for more than a millennium? They are angry with us because we (for reasons that evade my comprehension currently) symbolize the worst of western 'white man' imperialism and colonialism; but they don't seem to notice that it was the European powers including Russia who did the imperial conquest and brutal exploitative colonialization two hundred years before the USA became a world power (and they don't seem to be angry at Russia, or France or Germany ... or at least not as angry). And, speaking of ANGER: "Heft (Moslem convert interviewed below) knows personally about the road to religious extremism. He says when he was in the thick of it, he would have killed his own parents had they come between him and his newly chosen religion." Hmmm...killed his own parents....now that's ANGER!!. Where did that come from? Grievences against the USA? Israel? Jews (who, he presumably learned during his conversion lessons, are the descendents of apes and pigs, and are therefore to be despised as sub-human, per the Qur'an)? Or from the Islamic teachings that he internalized during his conversion process? (*) As Kagan writes (below), do not be fooled by Moslem anger. Do not "...succumb to the illusion that America was beloved until the spring of 2003 and will be beloved again when George W. Bush leaves office." They do not hate us for what we have done (to them or to others, real crimes or imagined). They hate us for what we are: free, rich, successful, generous, multi-cultural, and non-Moslem. (*) Mohammed's (PBUH) earliest biographer, ibn Ishaq (8th century), recounts that one of Mohammed's first converts killed some non-believer in Medina for some slight against the Prophet (PBUH). When rebuked by his older brother who was still a pagan, the new convert threatened his older brother's life too. Upon seeing his younger brother's zealousness, the older brother told the younger: any religion that inspires that kind of fervour must be straight from God. And the older brother then converted on the spot. |
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"Man who knew some plot suspects says Islamic 'anger' prevalent"
A Toronto-area man who knew some of the 17 people charged in connection with an alleged bomb plot in Ontario says one had some fairly extreme views. Mohammed Robert Heft claims Faheem Ahmad thought the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington were a good thing for Islam. Three of the 17 suspects facing terrorism-related charges will be in a Brampton, Ont., courthouse on Friday. They cannot be named because they are under the age of 18. Evidence presented today in court cannot be made public because of a publication ban. Heft converted to Islam in his twenties. He says he fell briefly into a radical religious mindset but then regained his perspective. That's when he started helping troubled Muslims at a Scarborough, Ont., shelter. He says he knows five of the suspects facing terrorism-related charges, some of whom came to the shelter. He never heard any of them advocate violence against Canadians, but he says he had a long and disturbing debate with Ahmad, 21, two months ago outside of a Scarborough mosque. "He believed the 19 people involved in the World Trade Center bombings were martyrs and he was handing out DVDs openly of wills and testimonies of those 19 people suggesting what they did was right," said Heft. But Heft has a different impression of another of the suspects, 25-year-old Stephen Chand, whom he describes as quiet and not at all political. "I felt no threat from Steven Chand. This alleged [threat of] beheading of the prime minister sounds like a Hollywood movie to me." Heft says a lot of young Muslims are angry and extremism is prevalent in the Toronto area. They get upset when they hear of alleged atrocities overseas in places like Iraq. "People get emotional. Imagine if somebody came into your house and raped your family, or by mistake just blew up your family, you'd get a little angry. "I mean we get angry ... when the water isn't hot in Canada or we lose our electricity for a day. So imagine what these people overseas are going through." Heft knows personally about the road to religious extremism. He says when he was in the thick of it, he would have killed his own parents had they come between him and his newly chosen religion. He blames the spread of extremism on the internet and what he calls "do-it-yourself Islam," where uneducated scholars are bending the peaceful word of the Koran to suit their violent ideology. "For the last two years I've been involved in this mentality. I was dealing with it on a grassroots level. All it takes is a little education and sorting out who to take religion from." Heft is hoping to open a new Islamic centre and residence for Muslim men and women. The idea is to help troubled young people and get those who have become radical back on track. He says the problem of extremism is something the Muslim community has to face up to and solve itself. Comments from Jihad Watch on Canada: Man who knew some plot suspects says Islamic 'anger' prevalent Why didn't Mohammed Robert Heft notify authorities about Faheem Ahmad? "Man who knew some plot suspects says Islamic 'anger' prevalent," from CBC News. Then why not educate Moslem youth about peaceful Islam? Why are there so many "extremists" in the Toronto area? What kind of education programs have the Toronto mosques estabished in order to fight this? Heft says he hopes to start one. "On Hating America"
I recently took part in a panel discussion in London about civil conflict and "failed states" around the world, centered on the interesting work of the British economist Paul Collier. The panelists included the son of a famous African liberation-leader-turned-dictator, the former leader of a South American guerrilla group, a Pakistani journalist, a U.N. official and the head of a nongovernmental humanitarian organization. Naturally, our reasoned and learned discussion quickly transmogrified into an extended round-robin denunciation of American foreign policy. The interesting thing was that the Iraq war was far from the main topic. George W. Bush hardly came up. The panelists focused instead on a long list of grievances against the U.S. stretching back over six decades. There was much discussion of the "colonial legacy" and "neo-colonialism," especially in the Middle East and Africa. And even though the colonies in question had been ruled by Europeans, panelists insisted that this colonial past was the source of most of the world's resentment toward the U.S. There was much criticism of American policy during the Cold War for imposing evil regimes, causing poverty and suffering throughout the world, and blocking national liberation movements as a service to oil companies and multinational corporations. When the moderator brought up nuclear weapons proliferation and Iran, the panelists talked about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As for "failed states" and civil conflict, several panelists agreed that they were always and everywhere the fault of the U.S. The African insisted that Bosnia and Kosovo were destroyed by American military interventions, not by Slobodan Milosevic, and that Somalia was a failed state because of American policy. The Pakistani insisted the U.S. was to blame for Afghanistan's descent into anarchy in the 1990s. The former guerrilla leader insisted that most if not all problems in the Western Hemisphere were the product of over a century of American imperialism. Some of these charges had more merit than others, but even the moderator became exasperated by the general refusal to place any responsibility on the peoples and leaders of countries plagued by civil conflict. Yet the panelists held their ground. When someone pointed out that the young boys fighting in African tribal and ethnic wars could hardly be fighting against American "imperialism," the African dictator's son insisted they were indeed. When the head of the NGO paused from gnashing his teeth at American policy to suggest that perhaps the U.S. was not to blame for the genocide in Rwanda, the African dictator's son argued that it was, because it had failed to intervene. The U.S. was to blame both for the suffering it caused and the suffering it did not alleviate. The discussion was illuminating. There is no question that the Iraq war has aroused hostility toward the U.S. around the world. And there are many legitimate criticisms to be made about America's conduct of the war. But it is worth keeping in mind that this anger against America also has deep roots. The Iraq war has rekindled myriad old resentments toward the U.S., a thousand different complaints, each one specific to a time and place far removed from the present conflict. It has united a diverse spectrum of anti-American views in common solidarity -- the Marxist Africans still angry over American policy in the 1960s and '70s, the Pakistanis still furious at America's (bipartisan) support for the dictator Gen. Mohammed Zia ul-Haq in the 1970s and '80s, the French theoreticians who started railing against the American "hyperpower" in the 1990s, the Latin ex-guerrillas still waging their decades-old struggle against North American imperialism, the Arab activists still angry about 1948. At a conference in the Middle East a few months ago, I heard a moderate Arab scholar complaining bitterly about how American policy had alienated the Arab peoples in recent years. A former Clinton official sitting next to him was nodding vigorously but then suddenly stopped when the Arab scholar made clear that by "recent years" he meant ever since 1967. The Iraq war has also made anti-Americanism respectable again, as it was during the Cold War but had not been since the demise of the Soviet Union. People who a decade ago would not have been granted a platform to spout the kind of arguments I heard on this panel are now given star treatment in the Western and global media. Such people were always there, but no one was listening to them. Today they dominate the airwaves, and this in turn is helping produce an increasingly hostile global public opinion, as evidenced in a recent Pew poll. There are two lessons to be drawn from all this. One is that in time the current tidal wave of anti-Americanism will ebb, just as in the past. Smarter American diplomacy can help, of course, as can success in places such as Iraq. But the other lesson is not to succumb to the illusion that America was beloved until the spring of 2003 and will be beloved again when George W. Bush leaves office. Some folks seem to believe that by returning to the policies of Harry Truman, Dean Acheson and John F. Kennedy, America will become popular around the world. I like those policies, too, but let's not kid ourselves. They also sparked enormous resentment among millions of peoples in many countries, resentments that are now returning to the fore. The fact is, because America is the dominant power in the world, it will always attract criticism and be blamed both for what it does and what it does not do. No one should lightly dismiss the current hostility toward the U.S. International legitimacy matters. It is important in itself, and it affects others' willingness to work with America. But neither should the U.S. be paralyzed by the unavoidable resentments that its power creates. If Americans refrained from action out of fear that others around the world would be angry with them, then they would never act. And count on it: They'd blame America for that, too.
David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli,
currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern
studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director
of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org).
Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com
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PANTSIL, DARFUR, AND THE ARAB MAN'S BURDEN
Posted by Gerald A. Honigman, June 21, 2006. |
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Something amazing happened the other day at perhaps the king of all sports events, the World Cup. A young black African football aka soccer star, John Pantsil, celebrated his Ghanan team's victory over the Czech Republic by taking out a concealed Israeli flag and, with the help of his teammates, ran it around the field with untold millions watching all around the world. There's a name for that sort of thing and it's called courage. At a time when much of the world--and Pantsil's Third World in particular--demonizes the Jew of the Nations, Pantsil stood up to tell it like it is. Arabs, in particular, are especially incensed. They who have massacred, raped, and enslaved millions of blacks for centuries (still going on as this article is being written), like to lecture others about Zionist racists. John Pantsil knows better, as do many others too intimidated to speak up. Israel has indeed aided black Africa tremendously for over half a century. Like many other football players (including Arabs), Pantsil also plays for another team besides his native country's. His other team is in Israel. Related to this story, an article appeared just a few days earlier dealing with how Arabs have dealt with some of Pantsil's fellow black Africans in the Sudan. Tucked into an article on page nine of my local Florida paper on June 15th was a classic line...but I doubt if it was noticed by most. It was, after all, nowhere near front page or an op-ed, editorial, or such. And it wasn't the sports section or the comics. I mean, if Arab civilians in Gaza get killed (due to a war waged by leaders they themselves elected whose goal is to exterminate their Jewish neighbor), then there's a real story... big pictures, big stories (using only Arab sources, of course), editorials, the whole shebang. That's the typical deal if Israel is the alleged bad guy. But those in that June 15th story were not Arabs allegedly killed by Jews, these were blacks undoubtedly killed by Arabs...so page nine would do nicely? While the media is running more articles about the Sudan of late, the message still doesn't seem to sink in to those who are at least now covering the story. The article by Nick Wadhams of the Associated Press dealt with the findings of the U.N.-backed court probing war crimes in Darfur. In the middle of the article, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, was quoted in his report as stating that eyewitnesses told of the perpetrators of the atrocities telling victims such things as, "we will kill all the black... we will drive you out of this land." But, try as you may, one would be at a loss to determine who those above perpetrators were. No need to guess, however, when the articles are about Israel... The perpetrators, of course, are Arabs who have waged war in Africa in the name of the Arab nation for over four decades (actually, since the 7th century C.E.). For whatever reasons, too often that detail is left out when Arabs are involved... and for the same reasons why the average reader doesn't get to read about Kurdish school children being forced to sing songs praising their alleged "Arab" identity in Syria, the plight of non-Arab Berbers, Assyrians, Copts, native kilab yahud "Jew dogs," and so forth throughout the "Arab" world. Rare was the student who heard anything about the war in the Sudan in the 1960s when its modern version erupted bigtime. Periodically the public would be tossed reports of Anya-Nya "rebels" who began a revolt against the imposition of Arab rule in the south in 1963...like those now coming from some columnists today. Similarly, one seldom heard about other non-Arabs in the region as well. The only time, for example, that I heard about Kurds (thirty million of them and, unlike Arabs, truly stateless) from the tenured chief honcho at Ohio State while doing doctoral studies in the '70s was when he mocked their own national aspirations. But "Palestine" and the "plight of the Palestinians" never left center stage. Too often it is Israel, alone, which is constantly put under the high power lens of scrutiny despite the fact that--unlike how Arabs have treated their own perceived nationalist competitors--the Jews indeed made repeated, honorable attempts at compromise with them. Think about numerous blacks in Africa alone--not only in the Sudan--who suffered quite a different fate at the hands of Arabs whose idea of "compromise" involves total subjugation to their own cause. Millions of these people have been massacred, enslaved, turned into refugees, and so forth. Now ask yourself how many times Arabs have been taken to task by the international community--always quick to accuse Israel for any and all alleged sins--for such things. In contrast to this Arab version of "compromise" (and as must be repeated over and over again whether some like it or not), purely Arab Jordan sits today on over three fourths of the land of the original April 25, 1920 Mandate of Palestine. And later there were repeated attempts to create that 2nd state for Arabs in Palestine on the quarter or less of the land remaining after 1922's creation of Transjordan. These were rejected by the Arabs themselves. Arafat did it again just a few years ago. Did Arabs ever offer any such thing to their own nationalist rivals? But there's no mystery here? In Arab eyes, no one but themselves could be rulers or perceived as equals in their neck of the woods--not "their" Jew dogs, gassed Kurds, massacred black Africans, and so forth. A few years ago, David Ignatius of the Washington Post wrote on September 16, 2003 of the danger in playing America's Turkish card in Iraq. When referring to Kurds, he managed to label them only as terrorists or rebels. At a time when most media folks still debate whether or not Arabs--who deliberately blow up Jewish innocents--are "militants" or "terrorists," folks like Ignatius have no problem using the "T" word for Kurds. And Ignatius' comments have often been echoed elsewhere, such as in Thomas Friedman's March 26, 2003 op-ed in the New York Times. Friedman advised that the Kurds should be told point blank, "what part of 'no' don't you understand? ...You Kurds are not breaking away." Again, these are the same folks who write volumes espousing the creation of the Arab's 22nd state and second, not first, Arab one in "Palestine." But I've yet to see the paper or hear the commentary endorsing similar rights for blacks in the Sudan, calling for a roadmap for Kurdistan, and so forth. While more coverage is now being given to the carnage in the Sudan, those who should know better still act deaf, dumb, and blind. Imagine if these were Jews committing these atrocities? We don't have to imagine. Think of the Muhammad al-Dura affair, the alleged Jenin massacre, and so forth. Front page news, editorials, and op-eds for months. It turns out that the Arabs lied through their teeth about all of this, and an all-too-gullible West simply accepts the Arab version of any given story over and over again? Why? Is it that after victimizing Jews for millennia, Gentiles need to convince themselves that Jews are indeed as bad as themselves? As the latest example of this mess and the West's collaboration in demonizing the Jew of the Nations,while Arabs hastened to cart off evidence from that recent Gaza beach tragedy, it turned out that Arabs lied again. Surviving evidence points to Arabs mining the beach to prevent Israeli commandos from launching another attack which took out Arab rocket crews earlier. Hundreds of mortars and rockets have been deliberately launched against Israeli civilians over the past months during the Arabs' alleged "cease fire." It appears that Arab picnickers likely encountered one of their brothers' own mines. So, again, what's up? I think I know but will be accused of being a paranoid Jew if I say it. So, let's return to the Sudan? Back in early March 2006, I came across Nicholas Kristof' New York Times' op-ed dealing with the Darfur genocide. And, unlike the above June 15th article, he did manage to mention the word Arab (once) as well. Compared to most others, Kristof has shown more responsibility in portraying the broader perspective regarding the struggle for political rights in the region. Despite this, Kristof still doesn't get it...and if he doesn't, the others of his ilk certainly don't. Is it a genetic defect of this species which dictates seeing the entire region only through Arab lenses? A current or future payoff from Arabs (others, for example, habitually move through the revolving door of politics and big business tied to Arab megabucks)? Is it that "Jew thing" again? Given the policy of the "liberal" media (and I'm a registered Democrat who drives a hybrid Toyota Prius) to treat others in the region besides Arabs as mere interlopers or rebels, their audiences remain ignorant of the atrocities committed against all who don't accept subjugation and forced Arabization as their fate. And even most, like Kristof, who finally write exposés about Arab actions, still can't make the next essential leap...that others are also entitled to what Arabs demand exclusively for themselves. While I share concern about earlier effects of imperialism Western style, the media has too often ignored the tens of millions of non-Arab peoples and/or lands which have been conquered, massacred, enslaved, turned into refugees, colonized, etc. by the Arabs' own centuries' old imperialist policies, creating new victims--black Africans, Kurds, Assyrians, Copts, Berbers, and so forth--as this piece is being written. Recall that half of Israel's Jewish population were refugees from the "Arab"/Muslim world. In case there are any doubts as to what the game plan is for the African part of what Arabs like to call "purely Arab patrimony," pay close attention below. The Third World likes to chastise the West for its condescending attitudes. Again, I agree with much of that criticism. Rudyard Kipling's poem, The White Man's Burden, and so forth... But while the liberal media is quick to agree, why are writers even like the more tuned in Kristof mum about such things as President Nimeiry's statements during the slaughter of over a half million blacks in the Sudan in the 1960s and 1970s (much more since) that...the Sudan is the basis of the Arab thrust into...black Africa, the Arab civilizing mission ("Arabism and Pan-Arabism in Sudanese Politics," Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 11, #2, 1973, pp. 177-78)? Is it that the Arab Man's Burden is acceptable, but the White Man's Burden isn't? Or why, over the decades, no response to this all-too-typical Arab approach as expressed in the Syrian Arab Constitution of the Ba'th?: "...The Arab fatherland belongs to the Arabs. They alone have the right to direct its destinies...The Arab fatherland is that part of the globe inhabited by the Arab nation which stretches from the Taurus Mountains, the Pacht-i-Kouh Mountains, the Gulf of Basra, the Arab Ocean, the Ethiopian Mountains, the Sahara, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Mediterranean Sea." I still can't tell for sure...Are there any Eskimos included in that above Arab vision? Probably not... but think about Mindanao in the Philippines. Or much of Europe if it doesn't watch out. France had its own little intifada not long ago. Again, keep in mind that these are the same folks who condemn alleged expansionist, racist Zionists who dare to assert that Jews deserve a state more than nine miles wide. Those same Jews who made Arabic the second official language of their sole state and who have Arab representatives in the Knesset who regularly side with Hamas (which rejects the existence of a state for Jews for the same reason one for Kurds or black African Sudanese and so forth is rejected) against the country in the region which has the freest Arabs... Israel. The June 15th AP article ended by stating that Sudan's national courts have shown little desire to investigate crimes against humanity in Darfur. But consider also the travesty of justice committed for decades by those alleged moral watchdogs in academia, the media, the U.N., and so forth who too often ignore such happenings above...unless it involves Israel. The latter was brought to the International Court of Justice in Geneva for building a fence designed to keep Arabs from deliberately blowing apart its children. Think about how much attention has been given by the "liberal" media to the cause of the Arabs' 22nd state... that additional one in "Palestine" which Arabs demand take the place of the Jewish one, not live in peace beside it? Now ask yourselves when the last time was that you heard or read something similar being demanded for any of the Arabs' numerous victims mentioned above? My Jewish "paranoia" again? I think not. Racist Zionists? Yea, right? Don't think so. Just ask John Pantsil. Gerald A. Honigman, a Florida educator, has created and conducted counter-Arab propaganda programs for college youth, has lectured on numerous campuses and other platforms, and has publicly debated Arab spokesmen. His articles and op-eds have been published in both the print media and on websites. Contact him at honigman6@msn.com or go to his website: http://geraldahonigman.com/blog.php |
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US CENSORSHIP; TACTICS AGAINST THE SETTLERS; HOW EFFECTIVE IS COUNTER-TERRORISM?
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 21, 2006. |
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ISRAEL'S TACTICS AGAINST SETTLERS The government scheduled the expulsion of Gaza Jewry, but opponents accepted government patronage until the last minute. Then they took a stand. Too late! The government moved swiftly and ruthlessly. The media collaborated with the government in favoring the Arabs and misinforming the war-weary public. Opponents needed to have purged the provocateurs and planted leadership. They were winning public opinion, but were betrayed by their leaders. My Israeli source explains, mostly in her words. The settlers and supporters spoke about love, instead of anger. They were passive in all demonstrations. All the politicians against the withdrawal spoke of non-violence. They didn't realize that they were dealing with a dictator. He is not a man that listened to reason by his own army or the people. Different tactics had to be used, not hugging the soldiers dragging them out. The people learned their lesson, so that during the mini-expulsion at Armona, no one was hugging. Now there are many confused soldiers and guilt-stricken ones. It weakened the Army. Many on the Yesha Council secretly worked with the government. They all told the Gaza residents that they will be saved when in the last few days the Council would bring into the Gush Katif area thousands of people. They lied. Actually they stopped people from entering. My source witnessed the events the evening before the evacuation. She reports that the Council lied to people in the fields, and led them around in circles, until they ran into the Army. At other times they physically stopped people from breaking through the police and IDF lines. There were times when protestors outnumbered the police, but Council representatives advised, sleep in the fields tonight, we will go in the morning. In the morning the Jews were surrounded by barbed wire. The Yesha representatives physically stopped youth who tired to get through. The second time they had people sleep in the fields with the pretense to go through, but Rabbi Beni Elon took a bullhorn and asked the people to follow him. The Council people forcefully took away the bullhorn and forcefully pushed Elon to the side. This was seen on TV, exposing the Council as liars. Nor did the Council bring the thousands to help those already on the scene. It is difficult to know how to conduct massive civil disobedience against a ruthless government whose brutality is understated by a biased media and which gets is own agents into the leadership of the protest. Given that media, violence by protestors would be exaggerated and cost public support. I guess public support has to be won not just for the particular civil disobedience, but to persuade the public that it must oust the government, a government of Quislings. Tall order for a country given to wishful thinking. The government has begun softening up the opposition to the Judea-Samaria expulsion (my source in Israel). "The scheme is to be implemented in stages: first they close roads to Jews, put up fences and gates, make the Jews wait in unbearable traffic jams, hand out racist 'resident' car stickers for Jews -- all this in order to depress, exhaust, and demoralize the Jewish public. Only after that are they able to expel masses of people." Example: A 15-minute drive connected Efrat in Eastern Gush Etzion with Jerusalem. Now the new road, built with Israeli money, is open only to Arabs, who use it to go from Hebron to Ramallah. "The Jews are made to take a huge detour through Efrat and the Tunnel Road -- adding to the traffic on the main highway -- extending the 8 minutes to up to 2 hours, because the alternative route to Jerusalem passes through hostile towns whose Arabs shoot or throw stones. When local Jews marched on one such town, the IDF stopped them. The Arabs felt protected in their terrorism. "The official reason for closing the road to Jews is their security. The real reason is to get the public ready for the "Convergence" Plan, the expulsion of Jews from Judea-Samaria. If implemented, G-d forbid, the scheme would bring Hamas, kassams, and katyushot to Jerusalem and Gush Dan." The government treats its own people like enemies, and treats enemies as if its own people. U.S. MEDIA DECEIVES Both the NY Sun and the NY Times describe the proposal that Abbas wants put to a referendum as implying recognition of Israel and accepting peace. It does not. It leaves open for negotiation demands that would mean the destruction of Israel. One of those demands is to pour in the descendants of Arab refugees in sufficient numbers not just to wreck the economy and require rationing of water, but to overturn Jewish rule. Given the brainwashing those Muslims have in the duty to kill Jews, and their tradition of looting, the likely results are dispossession and death. Call that recognition and acceptance? Other demands would deprive Judaism of its holiest sites and the Jewish people of their core historical homeland and the right to offer other Jews sanctuary. The plan would leave Israel without a purpose. That this is not a peace should have been figured out from its origin, unrepentant terrorists convicted of murders. Journalists might have given some thought to the plan's authorizing continued terrorism against Israel, until it withdraws from all the "occupied" territory. How long would it be before Hamas and PLO reminds followers that Islam considers all of Israel occupied? The Hamas author repudiated the plan. Moral: don't rely on the Arabs. The real question here is how the media comes to give any credibility to Arab "peace plans," Considering that they all are variations of the same aggressive demands, and that the Muslim Arabs approve of deceiving the enemy, they should be analyzed better. Unfortunately, the Israeli and US media treat proposals superficially. THE JEWISH SOCIAL CONSCIENCE A sign in the window of Manhattan's Jewish Community Center urges social action in behalf of the victims of (Muslim Arab) mass-murder in Darfur. This is a worthy cause. The Y's advocacy reflects the Jewish social conscience. The window did not urge social action in behalf of the victims of Muslim Arab jihad against Israel. Jewish nationalists notice that many activist Jews work in behalf of every cause but their own people's. I find this avoidance a shameful neurosis. HOW MUCH TO CRITICIZE ISRAELI DEFENSE Israel's Defense Minister asked the IDF to complete but defer its plan to rout the terrorists. Meanwhile he is holding off on another plan to liquidate the entire Hamas leadership. He claims he is giving Hamas time to stop its warfare. He also has suspended artillery fire against suspected rocket launchers. These decisions have been criticized as failing to defend Israel. Some of the news organizations comment on every action the IDF is ordered to take or to desist from taking. Mostly it is to desist, to shell empty buildings, or to uproot Jews. Most pundit criticism is premature, though IMRA correctly characterizes it as threatening rather than acting. Threats are useless, because: (1) The Arabs have learned that Israeli threats are not fulfilled; and (2) Islamists don't stand down, they have to be killed, to stop them. However, I don't want to second-guess every defense decision. If Defense Min. Peretz waits many days, then I would conclude that his threats were as empty as those of his predecessors. ISRAELI POLICY POORLY PLANNED, POORLY REVIEWED National Security Chief Eiland observed that the national security implications of the Gaza withdrawal were hardly discussed in advance. Withdrawal is completed (except for compensation to the expelled Jews) without any national evaluation. But PM Olmert already is jetting around the world touting his next withdrawal scheme. Eiland calls the original withdrawal a failure and a missed opportunity. He finds the new scheme likely to produce a non-viable, unstable, radical state (IMRA, 6/5). Israeli governments work by ideology, not by rational analysis, except for Netanyahu's economic reforms. Now the ideologues are trying to undo those reforms, which improved the economy and warrant extension. HOW EFFECTIVE IS COUNTER-TERRORISM? Germany and other countries have had much success apprehending terrorists. Nevertheless, said the intelligence chief of Germany, this success has done little to reduce the Islamist terrorism threat. Unlike the attacks on the US, "the terrorists in Europe are homegrown and homemade." (Jewish Political Chronicle, 5/2006, p.12.) The police catch many plotters, but if one plot succeeds, it may murder many people. Mosques, madrassas, and prisons breed terrorists faster than police can apprehend them. The West needs to keep Islamists out of its mosques, madrassas, and prison chaplain posts, and probably should keep Islamists and even other Muslims out of the West. They also need to destroy terrorist states and havens. RADICAL MUSLIMS TOOK OVER THE U.S. PRISONS "Radical Muslim Chaplains, trained in a foreign ideology, certified in foreign-financed schools, and acting in coordination to impose an extremist agenda have gained a monopoly over Islamic religious activities in American state, federal, and city prisons and jails." The radical chaplains, followers of the Saudi Wahhabism, harass moderate Muslims, confiscate their Islamic literature, and physically threaten them. The Wahhabis teach hatred of Shia and Sufi Muslims. These chaplains are certified and trained by the Islamic Society of N. America and the Graduate School of Islamic Social Sciences are under federal investigation for ties to terrorism. Gov. Pataki barred the chief Muslim chaplain in the NY State Dept. of Correctional Services from New York prisons, but did not act against the radical clerics whom the chief had brought in (Jewish Political Chronicle, 5/2006, p.13 from Stephen Schwartz, Weekly Standard, 4/2006). Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
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WATCH THIS FILM
Posted by Naomi Ragen, June 21, 2006. |
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Friends, Nazis in America. The following was filmed in the U.S. a few months ago. The film begins with some information in Hebrew, but quickly switches to English. Just so you know who's out there. Naomi |
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Not in Germany, but in the US... Not in the 1940's, but right now... How many of you really know what's happening in your own back yard? They're not scared anymore. In broad daylight, in the middle of downtown, by taking advantage of freedom of speech, and with police protection they continue to spread their hatred. Don't stand aside on this, take a stance and make sure that this will never happened again. Forward this Email to as many people you can so every one will know. The movie is from Israel and it's about the Nazis' of Minnesota filmed on 4/23/2006. Please take a couple of minutes and watch this movie. The beginning of it is in Hebrew, but the rest is in English. http://img2.tapuz.co.il/forums/1_78931098.htm Something to think about... Naomi Ragen is an American-born novelist and journalist who lives in Jerusalem. She can be contacted at www.naomiragen.com, where you can subscribe to her newsletter. |
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ISRAELI GROUPS REJECT "AMERICAN JEWS, KEEP QUIET."
Posted by Lee Caplan, June 21, 2006. |
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The first article below makes me particularly angry. Does this mean that we should keep quiet while the Israeli so-called "leadership" tries to commit suicide for the State of Israel? Even Shimon Peres, in response to the wave of Kassam rockets that have hit Sderot of late, said last week, "Despite the grave results [of the Disengagement from Gaza], which were not what we expected, we must continue [along the same path], because if not, it would have been [or, it would be] even worse." Even Fatah leader Mohammed Dahlan said today, that Prime Minister Olmert's withdrawal plan will not stop Arab terrorism. "I'm not saying whether there will be suicide bombings or not. But the conflict, the violence, the hostility, all will remain." Has there been a single person out there who is in tune with security issues who has praised Olmert's plan of convergence? On the contrary, the comments and the articles written against the plan have been scathing. So we in America should just sit back and let Olmert and his cronies allow our brethren to be placed in further danger? It is obvious that Olmert doesn't have a clue what is good for our people. He and his government are doing virtually nothing to stop the war against the people of Sderot. He and his government are doing virtually nothing to stop the incessant terrorism which is rampant over all Israel, which includes attempted kidnappings of young girls going home from school, shootings at buses, attacks on IDF soldiers and commanders, suicide bombers, increasingly sophisticated weaponry, weapons and terrorists moving freely into and out of Gaza. Instead, Olmert and his Defense Minister prefer to busy themselves with plans to evacuate so-called "illegal Jewish outposts" as a prelude to evacuating large, thriving, beautiful communities in YESHA. The fact that these "outposts" and communities provide protection for cities like Tel Aviv and Haifa is totally ignored by Olmert. So we in America should just sit back and watch? The democracy spoken about by Meckel continues to be squelched as people who are brave enough to speak out and protest against Olmert's policies are harrassed, persecuted, and imprisoned, while leftists who continually harm the State of Israel as well as Arab murderers remain free to continue their treasonous activities. Ehud Olmert and his cronies don't speak for the majority of the Israeli people. We in America and all over chutz l'Aretz must speak out against Olmert's suicidal plans. We must continue to contact President Bush and our Congressman and ask them NOT to support this crazy plan, one which will put Americans in danger of terrorism. We can tell them that even Egypt and Jordan are scared to death of Olmert's plan and are against it, as they have seen how Hamas and Al Queda have moved into Gaza and created bedlum there as they export terrorism. If even they are against the convergence plan, then it is clearly dangerous. We must show the American government and people that Olmert's plan is dangerous for this country, that it compromises our security. Most Americans don't care about Jews being expelled from their homes, most Americans don't care about Israel giving away land, but they do care about their own security. That is the message that we must transmit to our elected officials and to the American people, that Olmert's plan is dangerous for our security! Please see "The Impact of Israel's Proposed Retreat on U.S. Interests" by Yoram Ettinger at the end of this email below for more. For sample letters, please contact me. Tizku lemitzvos.
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"Israeli Groups Reject "American Jews, Keep Quiet" Approach"
Aryeh Mekel, Israel's consul general in New York, has stated that those American Jews who do not support Olmert's realignment plan "will be told to keep quiet." Israeli groups are up in arms. Three Israeli organizations - Professors for a Strong Israel, Women in Green, and Mattot Arim (Cities of Israel) - strongly approach. They feel that from both a Jewish and democratic point of view, Jews in the U.S. have not only a right, but an obligation, to speak their minds. As has been said, "Jews can speak up on human rights violations in Rwanda, but not on whether the Jewish People should give up their homeland?!" Excerpts from the joint statement: "The Olmert realignment plan is a successor of last summer's realignment plan, which has thus far cost Israel both a rocket war and a political victory for the Hamas. Nonetheless, Mekel insists 'it's not up to them [American Jews] to second-guess Israeli democracy and the Israeli voter's choice.' The joint statement was signed by:
Palestinian Terrorists Follow Up Kidnapping Attempt With Shots
This week in war: In a largely unreported inciden, Palestinian terrorists fired at a girls' school bus in Samaria, lightly wounding 5; wanted terrorist killed on Wednesday; anti-tank rocket fired... A busload of high school junior girls from Maaleh Levonah - a small Jewish community near Eli and Shilo - set out from their school Monday afternoon towards Jerusalem. North of Ofrah, near the hostile Arab village of Sinjil, a round of gunshots rang out, and though the bus is mostly bulletproof, three girls were wounded by shrapnel. Three other girls - both of whom lost brothers at the hand of Palestinian terrorist murderers, and one who lost both parents in a terrorist shooting - were treated on the scene for shock. Jews from the Shilo area conducted a morning prayer service at the site of the shooting the next morning. It was originally thought that the play for the school's commencement exercises the next night would be canceled because of the injuries of some of the actresses, but in fact, the show in Maaleh Levonah went on as scheduled - with the participation of all the peformers. Last week, two 9th graders from Maaleh Levonah were saved from an Arab kidnapping attempt as they waited on the highway for a ride to Jerusalem. One girl ran away as the armed Arabs got out of the car and made their way towards her, while the other was nearly pushed into the car, but escaped with several scratches on her face when an army car happened along at that moment. This coming Thursday, at 4:30 PM, in response to the near-abduction, a small group of women will demonstrate Jewish presence on the roads of Shomron by walking from Tapuach to Eli. The group has been making similar walks for the past four months. Without any official army escort, they have made their way from Tapuach to Ariel, from Ramat Gilad to Karnei Shomron, from Yakir to Emanuel, and along other routes. They invite others to join up; call Ruthie at 0577-208135. Arabs attacked an Israeli car with rocks near Karnei Shomron Tuesday morning; damage was caused, and no one was hurt. In Yitzhar, at a hilltop outpost known as Hilltop 725 - one of those on Defense Minister Amir Peretz's list of outposts to demolish forthwith - a soldier shot over the heads of Jews Tuesday afternoon. The Jews were in the midst of trying to banish an Arab who had approached their homes with his car, and the soldier was trying to deter them. Just over a week ago, a policeman fired in the air at a group of Jews during a scuffle. Arab terrorists fired an anti-tank missile from northern Gaza late Wednesday morning, causing no damage. Early Wednesday morning, an IDF force encountered two armed terrorists in the Shechem region, and opened fire, killing one - Daoud Katuni. Katuni was responsible for dispatching the suicide terrorist who, dressed as a religious hitchhiker, entered a Jewish car and blew himself up at the entrance to Kedumim. Four Jews were murdered in that attack three months ago: Rafi and Helena Levy, 20-year veterans of Kedumim; Reut Feldman of Herzliya, who was on a year of National Service in Kedumim; and Shaked Lasker, a 16-year-old from Kedumim. "Sderot Will Resume Protests Next Week; Kassams Continue"
Following yesterday's closure of the city's entrances, and last night's self-imposed electricity black-out, life in Sderot is returning to normal. Three more Kassams were fired since last night. Sderot residents shut out their lights all over the city at 9 PM last night, in protest of the government's continued failure to provide them with security from the ongoing Kassam rocket attacks. The darkness was to continue for two hours. However, at approximately 10:30, word came of the Israel Air Force strike on a terrorist's vehicle, with the resultant killing of three Arab civilians. Sderot Mayor Eli Moyal therefore ordered the lights turned back on, because of what he called the "security sensitivity" of the situation. Near-Normalcy Though the Kassams have not stopped, and Fatah terrorists are in fact threatening to step up their attacks, life in Sderot has returned to near-normal. The hunger-strikers stopped their protest fast on Monday night, city entrances are not blocked, and elementary schools are open once again. The city protest planners, however, have scheduled a mass three-day march from Sderot to Jerusalem beginning next Sunday. It will culminate with a massive demonstration outside the government complex; afterwards, a fixed protest vigil will be established in a tent at the site. Yesterday, dozens of Sderot residents blocked the three entrances to their city for several hours, allowing almost no one in or out. Exceptions were made for food deliveries, emergency vehicles, and others such as two busloads of students on their way to a day-trip. "The residents feel," said Sderot Mayor Eli Moyal during a visit on Monday by President Moshe Katzav, "that that the government is not protecting their lives the way it should. The feeling is that [the government] is simply leaving us to our own devices in the face of these rocket attacks." Many of the residents called on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to follow Katzav's example and come for a visit as well. "If he can send all his top officials to come, then he can come too - if only to give us that support," said Lt.-Col. (ret.) Chaim Kuznitz. Mayor Moyal said that the rest of the country appears not to be aware of the "war atmosphere" that the people of Sderot are living through. Aspects of this atmosphere include: the frightening "Red Dawn" warning alerts sounded every time a rocket is fired towards the vicinity; the abrupt week-long closing of schools and kindergartens throughout the city; the perpetual lack of certainty as to where and when a rocket will fall; and more. Peres: "Kassams, Shmassams" Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres caused a stir Monday evening when he belittled the residents' complaints. "[We] have to stop being hysterical about the Kassams," Peres told reporters in the Knesset. "We are all fanning the hysteria. What's the big deal? Kiryat Shmonah was shelled for years. What, there were no rockets in Kiryat Shmonah? We have to tell the Palestinians that Kassams, Shmassams, we're staying." He said that several measures must be taken to stop the rockets, but did not elaborate. In response, Mayor Moyal said that Peres should be fired, and should stay away from Sderot. MK Uri Ariel (National Union) said that Peres has been detached from "everything that is happening here ever since the days of Oslo" and that perhaps if he visited Sderot, "he would start worrying about the welfare of the Sderot people at least as much as he worries about the Palestinians." Mechi Fendel, a mother of six who has lived in Sderot for ten years and has been active in organizing community projects such as protests and charity drives, told Arutz-7, "Can a country really tolerate rockets falling on a city, just an hour from Tel Aviv? ... What we would like to see are signs all over the country, just like with the struggles for Gush Katif and the Golan, saying, 'Jerusalem with Sderot,' 'Givatayim with Sderot,' and the like. In addition, it would be good to have delegations from different cities come and visit, as some did from Ofrah and Beit El." Is There a Solution? On Tuesday evening, speaking at the 35th World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that though there is no definitive solution to the Kassam problem, Israel would take measures harsher than any taken in the past against Palestinian Authority attackers: "No one has immunity, no matter what he does, and no matter with what group he's associated." Some politicians and military experts feel that a solution to the Kassam problem does exist, in the form of a massive military operation in Gaza: * Public Security Minister Avi Dichter, for instance, has suggested turning Beit Hanoun - a northern Gaza city from which many of the Kassams are fired - into a ghost town. Fatah leader Abu Mazen called for an end to Kassams yesterday, but within hours, following the Israeli missile attack that killed three Arab civilians in Gaza, Fatah terrorists were warning of a sharp retaliation and resumption of Kassam rockets. "Negev Municipalities to Discuss Next Phase of Struggle" June 20, 2006 / 24 Sivan 5766 (IsraelNN.com) Negev communities demonstrating against government inaction to the bombardment of their communities by Kassam rockets from Gaza will discuss the next phase of their struggle today. The mayor of the Sh'ar HaNegev regional council said he would be joining the demonstrations alongside the residents of Sderot. "GSS Warns Arutz-7´s Eran Sternberg"
Eran Sternberg, director of Arutz Sheva's televised programming, was detained and questioned by General Security Services (GSS) on Tuesday. They warned him that he "had best be careful." The GSS, Israel's domestic intelligence agency, claimed that Sternberg engaged in incitement to violence against officers of the law. Sternberg, who was the former spokesman for the Gaza Coast Regional Council before the uprooting of the Jewish communities of Gaza, vehemently denies the allegations. Sternberg, 31 and a father of four, currently lives in Yad Binyamin, between Beit Shemesh and Ashdod, together with his expelled neighbors from the former northern Gush Katif community of Ganei Tal. Tuesday morning at 6 AM, three state agents arrived at the Sternberg home and demanded that Eran accompany them. He was released after 20 minutes of interrogation, after which Sternberg said his interrogators told him that they do not have clear evidence of the alleged incitement. Nonetheless, he said, the GSS agents concluded with a warning that he was "walking a bad path" and that he "had best be careful." Speaking with Arutz Sheva Radio after his release, Sternberg said, "I have not been involved in any sort of violence against the police and I will not be involved in anything related to violence. It is all lies and deception." He emphasized that his expression of his opinion that youth should delay their enlistment into the army until "it returns to itself" is nothing in comparison with public statements made by the Left. Knesset Member Aryeh Eldad (National Union) said the police and GSS were abusing their authority in order to silence government critics. It is absurd that law enforcement agencies were silencing Jewish dissent while "Arabs who praise the actions of terrorists walk around free," Eldad said. The Movement for the Whole Land of Israel and representatives of the Nahalal Forum, a grassroots movements of secular and labor Zionist activists, reacted with rage at what they called "the false arrest" of Eran Sternberg. Tzafrir Ronen, a leading spokesman for the Nahalal group, said: "Eran Sternberg is a public figure, a journalist, a television station manager - his words represent a clear, loud voice in favor of democracy. Olmert is the one violating democracy. We all remember how, after he and Ariel Sharon swore to respect the referendum among the Likud voters, he contemptuously trampled it and charged ahead to the cheers of the protective media. Who is the violator of the law and democracy? By what right does the GSS arrest a journalist? Did the GSS take the time to arrest Professor Sternhal, who called for the terrorists to murder settlers? Has the GSS become a completely political organization? Does it no longer understand its role?" Ronen compared Sternberg to the socialist pioneers of the early Zionist movement who founded kibbutzim such as Ein Harod, Degania, Hanita and Kinneret. "We, people of the labor settlement movement, the Nahalal Forum, stand behind [Sternberg] and we condemn the attempts to shut voices by the current regime of darkness in Israel," Ronen declared. "Instead of fighting against the enemies of Israel, against the 1,000 rockets that have landed on the towns surrounding Gaza and Sderot, the 'hero' Olmert and 'Generalissimo' Peretz choose to arrest the nation's pioneers. You will not succeed in strangling pioneering and Zionist Israel...." "MK Eldad: Police and Shin Bet Attempt to Silence Gov't Critics" Jun 20, 2006 / 24 Sivan 5766 (IsraelNN.com) MK Aryeh Eldad (National Union-NRP) said the police and the Shin Bet (the nation's clandestine intelligence agency) were abusing their authority to silence government critics. He said it was absurd that law enforcement agencies were silencing Jewish dissent while "Arabs who praise the actions of terrorists walk around free." Eldad made his remarks after the Shin Bet briefly detained former Gush Katif spokesman Eran Sternberg for questioning on charges of incitement and engaging in violent activities. "Foreign Governments Are Key Backers of Peace Now"
Peace Now, a far-left Israeli-based organization promoting Israeli withdrawal to pre-1967 borders and removal of all Jewish communities in Judea/Samaria, is largely funded by foreign governments. The organization, which spends large sums of money finding and detailing every new Israeli structure in Judea and Samaria, is effectively on the payroll of at least three European governments, according to Israeli investigative reporter David Bedein. Those governments provide the financial support for the activities of Dror Etkes, whose staff researches and publicizes data relating to every aspect of the Israeli government's support for the quarter-million Israelis living in Judea and Samaria. Etkes, who is studying for an M.A. in history, draws a salary of NIS 150,000 ($34,000) per year for his anti-settlement activities for Peace Now, a large sum by Israeli standards. The foreign governments which fund Etkes and Peace Now, such as Britain and Norway, are fundamentally opposed to the existence of all Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria. The money Peace Now receives to promote an Israeli withdrawal from those territories, therefore, may invariably serve those governments' foreign policy interests. Such an outcome would not be surprising, as Bedein claims Peace Now has accepted funding directly from the British and Norwegian Ministries of Foreign Affairs. Bedein claims he has documents detailing the extent of Peace Now's funding by foreign governments. In 2005, he says, Peace Now received direct payments from three European governments, Britain, Norway, and Finland, totaling nearly a half million dollars. For its 2006, budget, the group has approached six foreign governments - Britain, Norway, Canada, Germany, Holland, and Finland - and has received commitments for larger budgets from Britain, Norway, and Finland, according to Bedein. Yesterday, representatives of Peace Now met with a ministerial committee headed by Justice Minister Chaim Ramon (Kadima) in an effort to convince the committee to dismantle a number of Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria. The legal status of those communities has been repeatedly challenged by Peace Now. Such challenges often have direct impact on government policy and on the country's fragile social and political fabric. The government's decision to dismantle nine homes in the town of Amona, for example, followed a Supreme Court petition filed by Peace Now, claiming the homes were built illegally. The homes were destroyed in a violent police action, in which hundreds were injured. The violence and sharp polarization of Israeli society ensuing from the Amona tragedy may be playing into the hands of the same foreign governments which fund Peace Now. This is so to the extent that divisions within Israel's political communitiy weaken the government's ability to maintain Israeli control of Judea and Samaria in the face of world criticism. Regarding Finland's contribution to Peace Now, Bedein said a member of the Finnish Parliament told him the money was forwarded to Finland by the U.S. government. Bedein said another source of financing for Peace Now is the Economic Cooperation Foundation, a group funded directly by the European Union. The EFC was the subject of controversy last year when the Israeli media revealed that the organization was funding the activities of left-wing MK Yossi Beilin (Meretz). Despite the funding Peace Now receives from foreign governments, the organization is not required under Israeli law to register as a foreign agent. In contrast, if the organization were operating in the United States, it would have to register as a foreign agent with the U.S. Justice Department, Bedein explained. Bedein said Peace Now was not just a foreign agent operating in Israel but was "in effect spying on Israel for foreign governments." He said the organization not only engages in surveillance activities relating to Israeli settlements and their security, but "reports on and photographs military installations" belonging to the IDF. Bedein said Peace Now's association with foreign governments also calls into question the financial support the organization receives from American Friends for Peace Now, a group based in the United States. He said the U.S. group's affiliation with Peace Now may require the American group to register as a foreign agent in the U.S. Dana Olmert's not in jail -- so why is 15 year old Oriyah in jail?? Remember Dana Olmert who participated in the demonstration which called the Ramatkal a murderer? http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3261107,00.html Another demonstrator, much younger and way on the other side of the political spectrum, 15 year old Oriyah S. from Hebron, demonstrated 9 days ago (against the theft of a portion of the Hebron Jewish community playground for "security" purposes) but unlike Dana Olmert, Oriyah S. was thrown into jail. Even though she is a minor and even though she is not accused of any violence whatever, she is STILL in jail 9 days later. Please help by calling the new head of the Knesset Law Committee, Prof. Menachem Ben-Sasson, 02-6753115. Ask why 9th grader Oriyah S. is in jail whereas Dana Olmert is out of jail. The obsessive and unfair witch-hunts against Israelis who just happen to live in Judea! & Samaria simply must stop -- your phone call will help. Please carefully write down the answer you are given and forward the answer to sddym@bezeqint.net immediately. Thank you so much!!! "Likud: Kadima is Attempting to Boycott Us"
The Likud movement's representatives in the World Zionist Congress are accusing the Kadima party and Jewish Agency head Ze'ev Bielski of attempting to boycott them. The Likud members charge that the Kadima faction is seeking to block the Likud from any positions in official Zionist bodies. "This is behavior that is contrary to all the agreements among the factions at the Congress," said Danny Danon, chairman of the worldwide Likud movement. THE IMPACT OF ISRAEL'S PROPOSED RETREAT ON U.S. INTERESTS (Yoram Ettinger, http://yoramettinger.newsnet.co.il) 1. VITAL U.S. INTERESTS would be impacted by Israel's proposed retreat ("Realignment") from terrorist strongholds in Judea & Samaria. 2. Israel's retreat from So. Lebanon catapulted HIZBALLAH from a small -- to a regional - terrorist organization, the role model of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), haunting US servicemen in IRAQ and AFGHANISTAN. 3. Israel's 1994-1998 series of retreats from 85% of Gaza and 40% of Judea & Samaria created the Palestinian Authority: the Mecca of homicide bombing and anti-US and anti-Jewish hate-education (please see Cloakroom #190). Palestinian terrorists fought the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. ANTI-U.S. TERROR has increased since the initial 1993 Oslo retreat! 4. Israel's 2005 retreat ("Disengagement") from Gaza and Northern Samaria has established the largest terrorist base in the Mideast, adrenalizing anti-US terrorism. 5. Israel's 2005 retreat has been perceived as a cave-in by the role-model of counter-terrorism to the role-model of terrorism. It paved the road to HAMAS' electoral victory and upgraded the posture of ISLAMIC JIHAD and AL-QAEDA, thus providing friendly platforms for IRAN, SYRIA, SUDAN, YEMEN and the PRO-SADDAM elements. 6. Bolstered Palestinian profile constitutes a present and immediate lethal DANGER TO PRO-U.S. REGIMES in Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Gulf states, threatening US troops in the Gulf area. 7. Expanded Palestinian Authority facilitates the strategic re-entrenchment of RUSSIA, CHINA and NO. KOREA in the Mideast at the expense of US interests in the eastern flank of the Mediterranean and throughout the Mideast. 8. Another Israeli retreat would further undermine Israel's posture of DETERRENCE, which is critical to the enhancement of regional stability. 9. U.S. ENCOURAGEMENT of another Israeli retreat from Palestinian terrorist strongholds would exacerbate the threat to US interests. Would the US learn from recent history by repeating -- or avoiding -- past errors?!
Contact Lee Caplan at leescaplan@yahoo.com
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PROOF THAT ISRAEL WASN'T INVOLVED IN GAZA BEACH BOMBING
Posted by Deb Kotz, June 20, 2006. |
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THis is straight from the source, a surgeon who operated on one of the Gaza beach victims and examined the shrapnel from the explosive himself. He says it's of Hamas origin, not Israeli. Would someone please forward this to the UN head Kofi Anan and those stupid human rights watch groups who keep blaming Israel for this? I think that they believe that their own wishful thinking will make this a reality. If only they're quoted enough times blaming Israel, it doesn't really matter what the truth is. In other words, they will make their own truth--a very dangerous proposition. This note was sent me by Gail Sanders: I thought you might be interested in this email that my cousin, Dr. Michael Bayme, who is a surgeon in Israel sent me. |
Some of you may have been following the tragic story of a Gazan family that was destroyed by some sort of bomb last Friday. The world of course chose to blame Israel - without verifying any facts. The fact that Israel immediately accepted all the victims to its hospitals was seen as an admission of guilt, and not as a humanitarian gesture. There is now incontrovertible proof that Israel did not cause the tragedy - shell fragments extracted from one bomb victim match the types of bombs made by Hamas - and not Israeli artillery shells. How do I know? I received the victim last Sunday (at 2:00 am), operated on her until 5am, and have re-operated every night since. Now she's out of danger, and will survive to rejoin her family. A (highly edited to remove the guts and gore) photo of the over-tired trauma surgeon appears below. Best wishes to all. Michael
Deb Kotz is an active member of the Brandeis Chapter of the Zionist
Organization of America (ZOA) and maintains an email list to
distribute articles of interest to the local community. She can be
reached at DebKotz@aol.com
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KISSINGER DEFROCKED IN HIS OWN WORDS
Posted by Jerome S. Kaufman, June 20, 2006. |
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This article was written by Jason Maoz, Senior Editor, Jewish Press and appeared in the Jewish Press June 2, 2006. |
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Since returning to private life some three decades ago, Henry Kissinger has doggedly attempted to restore some luster to a rather badly tarnished image. Lionized by the press in the mid-1970's as "Super K," the unprecedented powerful secretary of state and mighty architect of American foreign policy during the Nixon-Ford era, Kissinger saw his stock fall rapidly in the 1980's and 90's as conservatives criticized him for what they saw as his defeatist policy of détente with the Soviet Union and liberals lambasted him for what they viewed as his amoral, Machiavellian sacrifice of American ideals on the altar of pragmatism and realpolitik. On the Middle East, Kissinger has labored to re-cast his image from that of a play-no-favorites geo-strategist -- in whose eyes Israel chiefly served as an impediment to greater U.S. influence in the Arab world -- to someone who has always recognized Israel's great political value, first in the cold war and now in the war on terrorism. Such a pro-Israel image is quite at odds with eyewitness accounts of Kissinger's dealings within the Nixon administration during the 1973 Yom Kippur war and with Israeli and Arab leaders as he brokered a cease-fire and attempted to craft some sort of peace accord in the months after the fighting stopped. In Gerald and Deborah Strober's, Nixon: An Oral History of His US Presidency, former congressional staffer, State Department official and AIPAC executive director Morris Amitay described Kissinger as trying "to fine-tune the outcome of the Yom Kippur war so that both sides would be dependent on the United States, which is what ultimately happened. But it involved bloodshed from the Israelis and it robbed them of a decisive military victory...." Though Kissinger had his defenders in the Strobers' book, the consensus of Nixon administration insiders is that the secretary of state wanted Israel to suffer at least a limited hit, in the hope that a bloodied Israel would be more malleable at the negotiating table, On the issue of the massive U.S. military airlift to Israel, most of those interviewed by the Strobers saw Kissinger as being an impediment to a smooth and timely transfer of arms. Former Nixon aide Leonard Garmen recalled: "Henry was always trying to titrate the administration's support for Israel, so as not to get the Arabs angry: 'We can do this but we can't do that.'" Kenneth Rush, who served as a deputy secretary of state and a deputy secretary of defense, painted a picture for the Strobers of Kissinger at his manipulative best (or worst): "Nixon wanted the re-supply; Kissinger delayed... not because he didn't want to help the Israelis, but he wanted to make them feel that they owed the re-supply to him; he could use this in his negotiations, as well as for his personal benefit. So he delayed, and the Israelis, at the time, thought that he was the hero who had stepped in and made Defense and Nixon come through. What brought all this to mind was the release last week by George Washington University's National Security Archive of 28,000 pages of Kissinger-related foreign policy papers. Kissinger is on record as assuring the Iraqi foreign minister in 1975 that while "we can't negotiate about the existence of Israel, we can reduce its size to historical proportions." What Kissinger had in mind when referring to Israel's "historical proportions" is anyone's guess, but his feelings about Israel -- and his wildly-off-the-mark projections about Israel's future -- come through all too clearly in his statement to the Iraqi official that American public opinion was turning more pro-Palestinian; that the then-current level of U. S. aid to Israel would inevitably be reduced; and that in not too distant future "Israel will be like Lebanon -- struggling for existence, with no influence in the Arab world." Once it reaches a comprehensive settlement with its neighbors. "Israel will be a small friendly country." Kissinger happily predicted. Jerome S. Kaufman is National Secretary of the Zionist Organization of America. and host the Israel Commentary website (http://www.israel-commentary.org). |
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PROPAGANDA TECHNIQUES; ISRAELI MEDIA AND REALITY
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 20, 2006. |
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PROPAGANDA TECHNIQUES True or false, benign or malign, makes no difference -- nobody likes being manipulated by propaganda that seeks to stir emotion with a ruse. Half-truths at best were the method used by John Batchelor in conjunction with the NY Sun's campaign for extensive immigration (5/31, Op.-Ed.). This isn;t about the Arab-Israel conflict, but the propaganda techniques used in his article are transferable. The stage is set with the false premise that Mexico is the scapegoat for American fear of the future. As he does for the whole article, Mr. Batchelor offers no evidence for this premise, no polls, no interviews, no quotes. Congress, he heard, warned about the threat of the border to our sovereignty, our justice, our well-being. He brushes off those concerns as wanton "anger toward the least among us." That clause is designed to arouse sympathy for the immigrants and guilt in those who oppose their undeterred entry. As for the security of our borders, a genuine concern is that non-Mexicans, including Islamists, have been sneaking in. Illegal aliens enter states that once were parts of Mexico, and that Mexicans want back. Mexicans in this country are known to boo the US and wave Mexican flags. Their government is setting up dual citizenship for them, organizing them to become a lobby in this country for that country, and rejects our right to control who enters. Our well being is reduced by millions of illegals who absorb more in taxes than they pay, in a country with declining resources. Mexico is not fulfilling its duty to take are of its own citizens within its own country, and sends its unwanted to us, while we are pondering how to pay for medical care for our own, large population. Then there is the standard rejection of immigration controls by citing the centuries of large-scale immigration into the US. That is an illogical argument. The fact that ten people have gotten into a lifeboat, now low in the water, does not mean that three more should be allowed to climb aboard and thrust it under. The whole alarm over immigration (which is not only about Mexicans) is said to be a similar scapegoating and denial of more serous problems that Bachelor said we went through a century ago, with exaggerated fear of Pancho Villa. To me, this is an irrelevant analogy, a digression. He won't face the reality of the present. The final paragraph makes the accusation of "...breast-thumping sermons of George Bush and his Congress as they denounce and defame Mexico..." Pres. Bush did not defame Mexico; he was careful not to. Diplomatic considerations aside, he would have been within his rights to, for that country encourages illegal immigration into ours. I think the article is "denouncing and defaming" our President. Most Muslims detest and want to change our culture. Massive immigration poses legitimate concerns. They are debatable. What is not legitimate is the propagandistic way of trying to brush them off with dismissal and stimulation of guilt in us Americans. IT'S WAR ON ISLAMISM, NOT JUST ON AL-QAEDA The terrorist network uses the Internet, smuggling, sympathetic NGOs, legitimate governments, safe havens, and front companies. To defeat the terrorist network requires a network, not just an army. The US is developing a network of federal and state law enforcement and intelligence agencies, the State Dept. (heaven help us), and other countries. Since Al-Qaeda wants to rid the Midast of Western influence and then take over what it calls secular governments, some of the Arabs states will cooperate against terrorism in their own countries. The US seeks to prevent international terrorism from establishing itself in weak countries. This does not require garrisons but sufficient, mobile force to deter enemies and maintain access to strategic resources and communications. Local countries must learn to defend themselves and not become dependent upon, nor be occupied by, US. It may take us a generation to win (Jewish Political Chronicle, 5/2006, p.10 from Sgt. Sara Wood, American Forces Press Service, 3/13). How shallow is the thinking of those who, with lips aquiver, condemn Pres. Bush because Iraq was not responsible for the 9/11 attack, yet he made war on Iraq! (But Iraq did offer terrorists training of a type that was helpful.) THE ISRAELI MEDIA & REALITY The reformed Israeli economy has perked up. Foreign investors are flocking in. Unwilling to acknowledge the success of their freer capitalism, the Israeli media, which is leftist, paints the economy as a failure, with poverty rife. Leftist appeasement has weakened Israel strategically, Israel's media, being leftist, keeps this from its people. The media admitted that Iran gave Hizbullah rockets that can strike most of Israel. Iran has been working towards that for years, but the media refused to see this coming, after Iran's original delivery of missiles to Hizbullah years ago. Instead, the media supported the Road Map, as if Israel were not under strategic siege. And now it is not raising an alarm and demanding to know why the government did not blow up the missile shipments at the airport or doesn't demolish them at the border. The media congratulates Israel for having retreated from Lebanon and reduced casualties, without wondering how much greater casualties will be when Hizbullah fires its 14,000 missiles. Likewise, the media tardily informed the people that the IDF was operating in Gaza again. This proves that Gaza withdrawal a failure. The new Hamas force, supposedly recruited to restore order, actually is devoted to fighting Israel (IMRA, 6/1). Are there economic problems in Israel, and are they due to reform or the need for more reform? So what is all this talk of Israel having a "vibrant" media? Israel's media would cripple the economy and cripples national defense, rather than admit its ideology is fallacious. EVALUATING THE GAZA ABANDONMENT Israel's Chief of Staff uses a politician's argument rather than a commander's reasoning about whether the abandonment of Gaza backfired. He denies its failure on the grounds that nobody in Israel was killed (though two were), since withdrawal. However, the Arab barrage has been increasing in intensity and accuracy. There have been near misses in strategic facilities. Deaths were avoided in school classes and household only by luck. Such luck is not likely to last (IMRA, 6/1). The planner, Gen. Giora, said it failed. WHY ARE OIL PRICES HIGH? Some OPEC members are taking advantage of high oil prices to extract and sell more than their quotas (IMRA, 6/1). The price is supposed to be determined by the ratio of supply: demand. Demand is rising in China and India. The supply is perceived supply, threatened by war. Markets anticipate future shortages due to war. Since some suppliers sell more than they admit, isn't the ratio more balanced than supposed? Is the problem a shortage of oil refineries? Will the US rebuild refineries where the Gulf Coast storms demolished them? PALESTINIAN ARABS ATTACKING COALITION Some Palestinian Arabs have been caught leading terrorist cells in the Sunni insurgency against the coalition. An estimated hundred youths entered Iraq for this purpose, posing as students and family visitors (IMRA, 6/3). The US has given those people hundreds of millions of dollars, and is encouraging Israel to leave them more territory. They use what they get to make war on the West. TERRORISTS ATTACKING SYRIA Syrian forces killed four terrorists, and lost one soldier. The arms came from a "neighboring country," along with Islamist tapes. The terrorists had been known to be moderate, previously (IMRA, 6/3). Even a terrorist country suffers from terrorism. The irony is that Syria is an ally of Islamist Iran, but Iran is Shiite, the attackers are not. EUROPE CATCHING ON W. Europeans had thought of the Arab-Israel conflict as a colonialist one. Now they are realizing that the Palestinian Arabs are extremists and that Islamists threaten Europe. Previously, 48% of Frenchmen favored the Palestinian Arabs, and 12% favored Israel. Now only 24% favor the P.A. (IMRA, 6/4). WHAT TO DO ABOUT ROCKETS FROM GAZA Rockets are falling upon Israel with greater frequency and accuracy. There was this discussion about it at a Cabinet Meeting. Israeli Interior Min. Dichter demanded that Israel station troops in Gaza or in other ways stop the Arabs from firing rockets at Israel, "as the IDF paralyzed Hizbullah this week." "If need be, we can turn Beit Hanoun into a ghost town. We need to return the balance of deterrence. It can't be that in one week, we can stop Hizbullah fire but not (northern Gaza's) Qassam fire." Defense Min. Peretz replied, "Occupying parts of Gaza is irrelevant. The security establishment has been working successfully for a long time in the face of the threats while examining new methods and tools of employing force." (IMRA, 6/4.) Min. Dichter has had professional experience in this, but Min. Peretz is a novice. His statement that the military has been working successfully against rocket launching is false. Waiting for them to finish examining new methods is what is irrelevant, in the face of the mounting barrage. HUMANITARIAN AID EXPOSED "Humanitarian aid is almost always political. It's governments and organizations with clear political agendas that dispense most 'humanitarian' funds. A close look at foreign aid indicates that the self-interest of the donor rather than altruism usually motivates such programs. The French directed economic aid, primarily to former African colonies, for years in order to further a Francophone community. Meanwhile, European aid programs to the Palestinians are a way to exercise a diplomatic role in a conflict in which most of the shots are called by the Americans. FOREIGN AID is seen as buying influence. While establishing a clear connection between economic dependence and political compliance is problematic, such a link is on the minds of decision makers." "Secondly, decisions on financial aid are hardly based on a meticulous comparative analysis of the respective needs of various hard-hit groups around the globe. Aid programs are only minimally related to an objective evaluation of the economic situation of potential recipients." The P.A. gets proportionately more aid than poorer places. "Some leaders in the less-developed world are ingenious at siphoning aid away from those who truly need it." "Food and medicines sent to the Palestinians will invariably end up in the hands of the armed militias." UNRWA helps perpetuate welfare dependency. "Disasters that attract the attention of the media for extended periods are inevitably viewed as good tools for public diplomacy. Such disasters are capitalized upon to announce generous offers of foreign aid (not always fully delivered) in order to enhance national reputations." (IMRA, 6/4.) PM OLMERT FLATTERED PRES. MUBARAK Olmert praised Mubarak as a partner for peace and against terrorism. When Israel urges the US not to give Egypt the latest weaponry, Congress notes his inconsistency. As for Mubarak's record, he has refused to visit Israel, he strives to keep all the terrorist militias armed, he has not acted to stop the smuggling of arms into Gaza, and his military absorbs billions of dollars of US arms under a doctrine that assumes war against a country where Israel is located (IMRA, 6/5). Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
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WHY DID NOT A SINGLE ISRAELI JOURNALIST ASK THE QUESTIONS THE
GERMAN JOURNALIST DID?
Posted by Yardena Anat Even, June 20, 2006. |
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The following article by Thorsten Schmitz, published in the German newspaper Suedduetche Zeitung. It was translated by Ami Isseroff. One wonders WHY not a single Israeli journalist asked the questions the German journalist did? Iti is called "The war of images: Seven casualties in Gaza beach: Was it a shelling attack by Israel? Or an exploding Palestinian land mine? An example of how sometimes Palestinians bend the truth." and was written by Thorsten Schmitz. It is archived at http://www.sueddeutsche.de/ausland/artikel/315/78237/5/. This was translated into English by Ami Isseroff. |
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Last Friday, ten-year-old Huda Ghaliya woke up early in the morning even though she did not have to go school. She was excited. Final exams were over and summer vacation had just begun. Huda's father had promised the children on Friday of last week that they would go to the beach in northern Gaza for a picnic. According to her cousin, Huda was one of the best students in her class. She loved mathematics, biology and reading. Her favorite poem is called "Identity Card," by Mahmoud Darwish. It is a sad poem about a homeless Palestinian and his hatred of the occupiers. Carrying plastic tables and chairs, and baskets filled with corn on the cob and pita bread, this large family left their home in Beit Lahiya (population of 35,000), and traveled the short distance to the beach. Beit Lahiya is known for its strawberries, as well as for the fact that short-range rockets are fired from this city toward Israel. The picnic ended in death for her father, one of his two wives, and five of his children. Around 5 PM, there was an explosion in the middle of the family. Seven people lost their lives on the beach and on their way to the hospital that Friday afternoon. The bloody picnic made Huda Ghaliya world famous in just a few hours. For this, she has photographer Zakaria Abu Irbad to thank. In the blink of an eye, after a metal-filled device exploded, the 36-year-old photographer from Gaza City took his camera and recorded the misfortune. A Lucrative Job Irbad works for the Arab TV Production company, Ramattan News Agency. The agency has bureaus in the West Bank city of Ramallah and Gaza City, which is the main city in the Gaza Strip. The largest TV networks in the world, including CNN and ABC, news agencies such as Reuters and AP, and German TV stations work together with Palestinian cameramen when it comes to news from Gaza. Pictures of the hopeless world in the Gaza Strip are first distributed by Palestinian cameraman. Working as a cameraman for the western media is a very lucrative business for the Palestinians. Some cameramen earn as much as $250 per day. Some Palestinians don't make that much money in a half a year. This past Friday, Irbad had professional good fortune. He was the first to arrive at the scene of the tragedy. His agency, Ramattan News Agency, sold the heart-rending footage of the hysterical and crying Huda Ghaliya to media all around the world. His pictures of Huda -- as she pulls her hair, beats her chest, falls over her dead father in the sand, and wanders in the sand crying -- appeared in Australia, India, Europe and the US. The cause of death of the Gahliya family members was very clear to the Arab world and the Palestinian community already on Friday: Israeli artillery fire. To reinforce this assumption, the Arab TV networks inserted archived footage of Israeli soldiers firing artillery shells among the images provided by Irbad. Following the story, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and Fatah President Abu Mazen claimed the family was killed by Israeli artillery fire. Both used the term "massacre." In a rare display of agreement between Hamas leader Haniyeh and Abbas, they symbolically adopted Huda on Saturday. A Palestinian child who lost his father served as a witness to the adoption. (Huda's beloved mother Hamdiyah was wounded but survived the blast). A team of US Human Rights Watch activists determined that Israeli artillery was responsible for the explosion. Human Rights Watch carefully analyzed the scene after visiting the site and conducting interviews with eye witnesses, policemen, and physicians. It strongly suggested that Israeli artillery was responsible for this tragedy. The report of this human rights group does not take into account that the supporting evidence from the beach was examined a day after this unfortunate event -- enough time to remove any important evidence. The Israeli Ministry of Defense, using initial reports from radar and satellite pictures, explained that the explosion that killed the seven Palestinians did not come from the army. Chief of Staff Dan Halutz said Israel regrets the death of the Palestinians but that does not mean "that we are responsible for the deaths." According to Israeli army reports which relied on film footage and physicians' reports, but not on an on-site investigation, the Israeli army fired six artillery shells in the direction of the Gaza beach on that Friday afternoon. In accordance with reports from Halutz, five of the six shells were fired between 4:31pm and 4:48pm, approximately 250 meters north of the position of where the family was picnicking. The purpose of the artillery shelling was to stop Palestinian rocket fire. An unmanned Israeli army drone recorded the Gaza Strip at the time of the firing. From the film, one can see civilians located 250 meters south of where five craters created by the artillery fire on the beach were visible. According to army information, the explosion on the strip of sand where the Ghaliyas were picnicking must have occurred between 4:57 PM and 5:10 PM. Prior to 4:57 PM, the army film shows a normal scene at the beach. It is strange that the over-flight film does not show beachgoers fleeing after the artillery shells landed 250 meters away. The next pictures from army film show the ambulances as they arrive at the beach. That is at 5:15 PM. The hospital from which the ambulances arrived is five minutes from the site of the explosion. A Possible Unexploded Shell The Israeli army cannot determine the site of impact for the sixth artillery shell which Human Rights Watch and the Palestinian Government claim was an unexploded shell that caused the deaths of the seven family members. But the army asserts that it is "impossible" that the shell could have landed 250 meters from the site it was targeting. As further evidence, Israel claims that there were four wounded people from the beach who received treatment in a Tel Aviv hospital. A piece of shrapnel taken from the body of one of the wounded could not have come from weapons in the Israeli arsenal. The Israeli army does not discount the possibility that the explosion was caused by a mine planted by Palestinians to prevent Israeli marines from entering the Gaza beach. Irbad's footage has great significance due to the contradictions it raises. This footage generates more questions than clarifications. Segment of the original footage are so questionable that the CNN website is only showing abbreviated clips. Irbad explained to the SZ that he learned about the explosion from the medics and followed the ambulances to the site of the blast in his own car. From the footage that Irbad took of the hysterical ten-year-old Huda, it appears as if he was a witness to the explosion. He also filmed the arrival of the emergency workers to the site which must mean that he was already on the beach. Furthermore, some of the dead and wounded were covered with blankets -- who did that? Irbad explains to the SZ that Huda was not wounded because she had been swimming in the sea. But in his video, Huda is running around in dry clothing. For minutes, Irbad ran after Huda and recorded images of the dead and wounded. Suddenly, the camera captures footage of a man next to Huda's dead father, who was also covered by a blanket and lying motionless, standing up with a machine gun in his hand. The footage shows rescue workers in green hospital uniforms and a dozen men with typical Hamas-style beards apparently removing evidence from the site. In any case, one has to ask why the emergency workers didn't treat the wounded and make sure that police arrived at the site. Did the Hamas men remove pieces of evidence as was claimed by the Israeli media and Palestinian eyewitnesses? The Cameraman's Evasive Answers Curiously, Irbad's footage does not include an identifiable crater. The more Irbad was asked about this by the SZ, the more evasive he was. Was he at the site before the ambulances arrived? Who are the civilians who are cleaning the beach? Where is the armed man who suddenly got up from the ground? If the artillery shell that killed the Ghaliya family was from the Israeli army, why don't the Palestinians present the fragments? And: Why didn't Irbad think of calming the hysterical Huda down instead of following her for several minutes with his camera? Irbad says "she asked me to film her. She wanted to be seen with her dead father and wanted to show the world what criminals the Israelis are." Is it possible that the saddened ten year old Huda, who just lost seven family members, could have been giving Irbad stage directions? Pallywood There is nothing new about Palestinians publishing falsified or fabricated pictures during the Middle-East war. Since the airing of a 60 Minutes investigative report, the term "Pallywood," modeled after the Hollywood film industry, has been used by the media. In the report, for example, there are Palestinians from the early days of the Intifada who are carrying a dead person. One of those carrying the dead stumbles, and the supposed corpse falls to the ground -- and springs back onto the stretcher, lies down, and mimics a dead person. The most recent example of this effort of the Palestinians to openly mislead the world occurred when Israel attacked three member of the Islamic Jihad last Tuesday, killing eight civilians, including two children. Shortly after the attack on the car in which the three terrorists were sitting, one can see three men on the other side remove a short-range rocket from the car. For two days, the sentence: "Urgent: News for our clients" flashed on the Internet site of the Ramattan News Agency. As the agency fears further dissemination of the Huda video whose authenticity is called into question by many people, they assert they have exclusive rights to the footage. No one else has the right to further disseminate these pictures without their consent. Contact Yardena Anat Even at yardena3@aol.com |
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LET ISRAEL BE JEWISH
Posted by John Stone, June 19, 2006. |
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This was written by Kalavai Venkat, an India-born, Silicon
Valley-based orthodox, practising, agnostic Hindu. It appeared on
India Forum
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Israel has allowed Daystar, a Texas-based Christian evangelical TV channel, to telecast into Israeli homes and attempt to proselytize Israel's five million Jews. Is this religious freedom or adding insult to the Jewish injury? For two thousand years, the Jews were systematically persecuted everywhere, except in India [1]. The Christian Bible instituted religiously motivated anti-Semitism, and continues to remain the most comprehensive anti-Semitic scripture. Norman Beck, a distinguished academic and Lutheran theologian, has catalogued over 450 anti-Semitic verses found in Christian lectionaries and calls for eliminating the anti-Semitic polemic [2]. The Church, since the promulgation of the acts of the Council of Elvira (~300 CE), has portrayed the Jews as "the enemies of the Heavenly Majesty. [3]" Christian teachings falsely demonize the Jews as "Christ-killers," "Children of the Devil," "Brood of vipers," etc., and pronounce all future generations of the Jews guilty of "killing" Christ [4]. The Christian Bible declares, "The Devil is the father of the Jews. [5]" Church fathers have demonized the Jews as cannibals that ate their own children [6]. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215 CE) decreed that the Jew be ghettoized and forced to wear the Jewish dress, conical hat, and the "Jew badge" - usually a yellow circle, symbolic of the Jew as betrayer of Christ for "gold," an image that fused religious and economic anti-Semitism [7]. Intensely persecuted, especially during the infamous Inquisitions, some Jews converted to Christianity. Even that would not remove the "stigma" of having been a Jew. Pope Gregory I warned that "a Jew returns to his faith like a dog to his vomit. [8]" Lest one should think that the Catholic Church alone is culpable of anti-Semitism, the Protestant Church has been as much anti-Semitic. After all, every denomination derives its religiously justified anti-Semitism from the Christian Bible. Erasmus, who influenced Martin Luther, infamously declared: "If it is part of a good Christian to detest the Jews, then we are all good Christians. [9]" Martin Luther was initially kind towards the Jews as he attempted to convert them. Once his attempts failed, he wrote the most vicious anti-Semitic tract: On the Jews and their Lies. In that tract, Luther justified the terrible sufferings of the Jews over 1, 400 years in exile and chastised them for not learning their lesson [10]. Luther urged Christians to burn the Jewish synagogues and expel the Jews [11]. He held that the Jewish misfortune is proof of Christian truth and Jewish error from scripture [12]. Luther called the Jews "bloodhounds [13]" and argued that Christians are at fault in "not slaying the Jews. [14]" Elie Wiesel, winner of the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize, writes of the Holocaust: All the killers were Christians. The Nazi system was the consequence of a movement of ideas and followed a strict logic; it did not arise in a void but had its roots deep in a tradition that prophesied it, prepared for it, and brought it to maturity. That tradition was inseparable from the past of Christian, civilized Europe. [15]" Wiesel's words are not rhetorical. It is evident that the Nazi hatred for the Jews is the culmination of the anti-Semitism intrinsic to the Christian Bible. The Nazis reprinted Luther's hate-filled anti-Semitic text, On the Jews and their lies. The editor of the 1936 Munich edition approvingly claimed that On the Jews and their lies was the "arsenal from which antisemitism had drawn its weapons. [16]" Hitler aptly told the Christian bishops who met him in the aftermath of the 1933 laws that he was merely putting into effect what Christianity preached and practised for 2,000 years [17]. The Nazis' illustrated educational handbook for children carried the hate-filled poem, "The father of the Jews is the Devil," a theme which, as I showed earlier, first occurs in the New Testament [18]. Both the Protestant and Catholic clergy eagerly handed over genealogical records to the Nazis, knowing fully that it would result in the destruction of Jewry, even though the clergy had the opti on to refuse [19]. Civilta cattolica, the official organ of the Vatican, writing in 1937 CE, after the Nuremberg race laws had been fully enforced, discussed undertaking the total expulsion of the Jews. It went one step further and discussed the extreme option of "destruction" of the Jews. Of course, after discussing the option of destruction, the Vatican rejects it as undesirable. But, what kind of religious order would even contemplate the "Final Solution" of the Jews (an idea that Hitler would later embrace)? Why did the Protestant and Catholic clergymen provide the Nazis with genealogical records? They did so not because those clergymen were intrinsically evil but because they had internalized the Christian libel that the Jews are cursed forever and hence worthy of destruction. Even the gruesome Holocaust did not lead to introspection among Christians. When Hitler committed suicide, Cardinal Adolf Bertram ordered that in all churches of his archdiocese a special requiem, namely, "A solemn requiem mass be held in commemoration of the Fuhrer, where prayers to the Almighty that His son, Hitler, be admitted to paradise, be offered. [20]" The German Lutheran Church and its leaders such as Bishop Otto Dibelius, who later became the President of the World Council of Churches (1965), called the Nazi policies towards the Jews "a fulfillment of Luther's program." The theologians of the German Lutheran Church that met in Darmstadt in 1948, three years after the Holocaust, proclaimed that the Holocaust was a divine punishment and called upon the Jews to halt their rejection and ongoing crucifixion of Christ [21]. This was not an isolated phenomenon restricted to Germany. Numerous studies have demonstrated that there is a direct correlation between one's observance of Christian faith and one's anti-Semitism. Studies conducted by the Anti-Defamation League and U C Berkeley reveal that in the USA, a vast majority of Lutherans and Southern Baptists, around 80 percent, believe that the Jews can never be forgiven for their gullibility in deicide [22]. A vast majority of Christians continue to be anti-Semites [23]. A vast majority of those Christians do not care if their anti-Semitism offends a Jew [24]. The Jewish community faced a unique disadvantage when Israel was formed in 1948: even though Christian teachings had led to their persecution for 2, 000 years culminating in the Holocaust, they needed the support of the Christian West to become a viable nation. This is largely true even today. So, Christians should themselves introspect and cleanse their scripture of anti-Semitism. Yet, barring a few honorable exceptions such as Norman Beck and James Carroll, Christians have failed to evaluate the teachings of the Christian Bible that almost caused the extinction of the Jews. Sadly, many still believe that it is their right to proselytize Jews. The world would be offended if an anti-Semitic political ideology is telecast into Israeli homes. Why then should we condone if an anti-Semitic religious ideology is telecast into Israeli homes? We do not tolerate the Hakenkreuz, a symbol associated with anti-Semitism. Why should we tolerate if the Cross and the Crucifix, constant reminders of the hoax that the Jews are guilty of Christ-killing, are beamed into Israeli homes? When Daystar is beamed into Israeli homes, it is not religious freedom. It is a travesty that adds insult to two millennia of Jewish injury. References: [1] Katz, Nathan: Who are the Jews of India? This book carries an excellent case study of how the Jews of India flourished without submerging their religious identity into the mainstream. [2] Beck, Norman A.: Removing anti-Jewish polemic from our Christian lectionaries, a proposal, http://jcrelations.net/en/?id=737 [3] Ruether, Rosemary Radford: Faith and fratricide, the theological roots of anti-Semitism, p. 189. [4] Matthew 3:7, 12:34 and 23:33, Luke 3:7 and Matthew 27:25. [5] John 8:37-59. [6] Chrysostom: Eight orations against the Jews 5:6. [7] Poliakov, Leon: The history of anti-Semitism, Vol. 1, p. 65. [8] Synan, Edward A.: The Popes and the Jews in the Middle Ages, p. 52. [9] Poliakov, Leon: The history of anti-Semitism, Vol. 1, p. 123. [10] On the Jews and their lies 47:138. [11] Rubenstein, Richard L. and Roth, John K.: Approaches to Auschwitz, the Holocaust and its legacy, p. 53. [12] On the Jews and their lies 47:139. [13] Ibid 47:156-157, 47:172. [14] Ibid 47:267-269. [15] Abrahamson, Irving [ed.]: Against silence, the voice and vision of Elie Wiesel, Vol. 1, p. 33. [16] Rubenstein, Richard L. and Roth, John K.: Approaches to Auschwitz, the Holocaust and its legacy, pp. 57-59. [17] Schweitzer, Frederick M.: History of the Jews since the first century A.D., p. 222. [18] Goldhagen, Daniel J.: A moral reckoning, the role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and its unfulfilled duty of repair pp. 19-21. [19] Ibid pp. 59-60. [20] Ibid p. 200. [21] Rubenstein, Richard L. and Roth, John K.: Approaches to Auschwitz, the Holocaust and its legacy pp. 57-59. [22] Glock, Charles Y. and Stark, Rodney: Christian beliefs and anti-Semitism, a scientific study of the ways in which the teachings of Christian Churches shape American attitudes toward the Jews, table 24, p. 62. [23] Ibid table 48, p. 129. [24] Ibid table 58, p. 155. |
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WHERE DOES MR. ERLANGER WANT THE CASUALTIES?
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 19, 2006. |
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Steven Erlanger's "Gaza Residents left to scrape by after West cuts foreign aid" (San Jose Mercury News, 6/18/06) paints a vivid picture of the tragic suffering of the Palestinian people. But he omits the four most important facts about this dire situation: a.) According to the New York Times editorial of 6.17.06, the Hamas government is NOT a legitimate voice of the Palestinian people...NOT a true government....NOT a part of the community of nations. That government, per the Times editorial, does not yet have its "...admission ticket to the real world," and has not yet progressed from "...a lawless opposition to a lawful government." And this is because Hamas has shown itself, in word and in deed, to be a brutal, barbaric, hate-driven, genocidal, criminal, terrorist thugocracy which cannot yet be counted as part of the civilized world. The Palestinian people elected that government only a few months ago, in fair, open, legal, democratic elections. In the real world, there are often very nasty consequences to really, really bad choices. The Palestinian people made their choice, and now they are facing the consequences. b.) The restrictions on movement out of Gaza are to stop terrorism. If one argues against these restrictions, one must ask the gut-wrenching but unavoidable question: where do you want the casualties? With the restrictions, the casualties are described in Erlanger's article... the Gazan Arabs who are inconvenienced and distressed and reduced to grinding poverty. Without the barrier, the casualties are the un-numberable Israelis who will be blown up, burned alive, shot, stabbed, wounded, or kidnapped by the Palestinian terrorists whom the restrictions at the Gaza borders now stops. Where would any nation want the casualties? c.) Israel offered millions of dollars worth of aid in the form of medicines for the impoverished hospitals of the Gaza Strip. Hamas said "NO! We can't buy bullets with penicillin!" So the hospitals did not get their medicine. d.) All that Hamas needs to do in order to reverse this dire situation is to merely say (not take any action, just say) that they renounce terrorism, recognize Israel, and seek peace. But Hamas leaders are so rigidly locked into their pathological hatred of Jews and of Israel, that they cannot even utter those words. Who is to blame for the suffering of the Gaza Arabs? David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com |
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ONE ISRAEL FUND DAY TRIPS -- SUMMER OF 2006
Posted by Aaron Tirschwell, June 19, 2006. |
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Join One Israel Fund this summer for exhilarating and unique day trips throughout Israel. Witness first-hand the beauty and history incorporated in our Homeland, with a focus on the Heartland -- YESHA. Explore the past while encountering the issues confronting the present and future. Interact with and support the determined communities in Yehuda and Shomron. Embark on a journey that you and your family will remember for a lifetime! Tuesday, July 4, 2006 /Tammuz 8, 5766: Sites and Cities of the Shomron Climb to roof of Kever Shmuel for magnificent views of Jerusalem and
the Shomron
Wednesday, July 5, 2006/Tammuz 9, 5766: Yehuda -- Gush Etzion and Hebron Pray at Rachel's Tomb. View the national security fence that
surrounds the Kever
Sunday, August 20, 2006/ 26 Menachem Av 5766: Jordan Valley: The Next Frontier Take a dip at the shores of the Jordan River where Yehoshua crossed
into Eretz Yisrael
Monday, August 21, 2006/ 27 Menachem Av 5766: Sites and Cities of the Shomron Travel highway 443 and see the route of the "security fence"
Day Trip Details Cost for each day is $55/NIS 250 shekels, $45/NIS 200 per child. Cost includes lunch. Judy Auerbach and Era Rapaport, outstanding licensed tour guides, will lead the tours in English in an air-conditioned, bulletproof bus. Security considerations may entail a change in itinerary. Tours will leave from Jerusalem's Inbal Hotel at 9:00 a.m. promptly and return at approximately 7:00 p.m. For reservations and additional information, please contact: North America: Ruthie Kohn, -516-239-9202 x10 In Israel: Irwin Borvick, 054-570-1548 or Eve Harow, 057-622-8275 e-mail: daytrips@oneisraelfund.org REGISTER ONLINE: HTTP://WWW.ONEISRAELFUND.ORG Contact Aaron Tirschwell at aaron@oneisraelfund.org |
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THE CASE AGAINST DEMOGRAPHOBIA
Posted by Yoram Ettinger, June 19, 2006. |
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Enclosed you'll find the English translation of my latest OpEd, published today (June 19, 2006) by Ynet, the Internet edition of Yedioth Achronot, and Israel's leading Internet daily. The OpEd is based, largely, on a breakthrough American-Israeli
study, led by Bennett Zimmerman of L.A. (Yoram Ettinger is the head of
the Israeli contingency), which was published in February 2006 by the
Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies
(www.biu.ac.il/Besa/MSPS65.pdf). More data on the study can be
retrieved at
Should you wish to examine previous OpEds and/or newsletters, please visit http://yoramettinger.newsnet.co.il. Enjoy it, Yoram |
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Prime Minister Olmert's visit to West Europe has reaffirmed the central role of Demographobia -- the irrational fear of Palestinian demography - in determining Israel's permanent boundaries, in spite of the gross errors underlying the demographic scare. For example, Israel's Jewish population growth has exceeded Arab population growth in Judea & Samaria (2.1% vs. 1.8% during 1997-2004). Moreover, Muslim fertility rate, within the Green Line, has declined dramatically from 9.23 children per woman in 1960/64 to 4.63 in 2004, while Arab fertility rate (including Druz and Christian Arabs) has declined to 4 children per woman. The Prime Minister has reiterated his position that a retreat from geography is a prerequisite for saving Jewish demography. His determination to withdraw from the mountain ridges of Judea & Samaria -- which, in his opinion, possess a unique historical and security added value -- has not reflected a cave-in to Palestinian terrorism and/or US pressure. Prime Minister Olmert has demonstrated his capability to defy terror and pressure during the general election of 1996 and 2001 (when he supported victorious Netanyahu and Sharon, the hawkish candidates) and during his own mayoral campaigns in Jerusalem. However, currently, he intends to retreat under the influence of Demographic Fatalism, which has been nurtured by severely erroneous 1998-2015 Palestinian demographic projections. These projections have been embraced, without examination, by Israel's demographic establishment. They have spearheaded an intensive effort to instill demography-driven faintheartedness in the minds of Israel's policy-makers and the public at-large. In contrast, Gallup's March 17, 2006 survey of Jewish and Arab fertility rate preferences concluded that "Green Line" Jewish and Arab fertility preferences are equal at 3.7 children per woman, while East Jerusalem Arabs and Judea & Samaria Arabs prefer 4.1 and 4.5 (and declining) respectively. Gallup indicated that actual fertility tends to converge with fertility preference. Prime Minister Olmert is convinced that time works against Jewish demography, and that Jews are doomed to become a minority between the Jordan Rive and the Mediterranean. Therefore, in his mind, demographic considerations supersede geographic and topographic (security) considerations in the equation of Israel's national security and in determining the future of Judea & Samaria. Thus, Demographobia, which never penetrated the mind of Jewish leaders, when Jews constituted a minority of 8% (1900 -- Herzel) or 33% (1947 -- Ben Gurion) west of the Jordan River, dominates the mind of Israel's current leadership, in spite of the fact that Jews have been a 60% majority (67% without Gaza) during the last 45 years. Contrary to Demographic Fatalism, there is a demographic problem, but there is no machete at the throat of the durable Jewish majority, which benefits from a robust demographic momentum. For instance, the annual number of "Green Line" Jewish births has increased from 80,400 in 1995 to 105,181 in 2005, while "Green Line" Arab births have stagnated during the same period at around 40,000, with a drop to 36,000 per year during the first few months of 2006. The Jewish Demographic Momentum is further bolstered by the net annual positive migration (Aliya+returning Israelis-emigrant Israelis) of 20,000 since 2001. These developments have been ignored by Israel's "Prophets of Demographic Doom", who have consistently employed yesterday's outdated demographic indicators as a basis for tomorrow's projections, thus exacerbating their errors. Documented births, deaths and migration have refuted -- annually -- the projections made by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics and by Israel's "Prophets of Demographic Doom". Demographic reality has vindicated Zionist leaders, who persisted in their attempt to establish the Jewish State, in face of seemingly-insurmountable-adverse security, economic and demographic odds. Certainly, there is no reason for Demographobia at a time when a critical Jewish majority has been attained between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, bolstered by unparalleled military, economic, financial, technological and educational achievements. Demographic growth provides no reason to sacrifice critical strategic assets on the altar of a bogus demographic scare. Ambassador Yoram Ettinger is a consultant on US-Israel relations as well as the Chairman of Special Projects at the Ariel Center for Policy Research. Formerly the Minister for Congressional Affairs to Israel's Embassy in Washington, DC, Ettinger also served as Consul General of Israel to the Southwestern US. He is a former editor of Contemporary Mideast Backgrounder, and is the author of the Jerusalem Cloakroom series of reports. Contact him at yoramtex@netvision.net.il or go to http://yoramettinger.newsnet.co.il. |
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CESR - HUMAN RIGHTS A PRETEXT FOR POLITICAL AGENDA
Posted by NGO Monitor, June 19, 2006. |
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This report was written by Aaron Beitman. The original has links to additional material and is available at www.ngo-monitor.org/archives/infofile/cesr_email_190606.html |
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The Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR), a New York City-based NGO, funded by the Ford Foundation and other philanthropies, claims to "promote social justice through human rights."[1] However, CESR publications on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict promote a highly political agenda, reflected in a one-sided Palestinian narrative that erases the context of terrorism. CESR campaigns demonize Israel and involve partnerships with organizations such as ICAHD, Sabeel, and the Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights. CESR's public relations activities and special consultative status with the UN Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ECOSOC) provide a forum to promote its radical ideology, masked in the rhetoric of universal rights. BACKGROUND According to its mission statement, CESR's objectives include advancing "social justice through human rights"[2] as well as promoting "the universal right of every human being to housing, education, health, and a healthy environment, food, work, and an adequate standard of living."[3] CESR's extensive activities related to Israel and the Palestinian Territories claim to highlight "the root cause of ESCR violations [Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights] - the discrimination and brutality inherent in the Israeli occupation - and to advocate for alternatives that recognize and promote equal rights for all people living under Israeli rule."[4] CESR was co-founded in 1993 by two lawyers and a scientist from Harvard University: Roger Normand, Sarah Zaidi, and Christopher Jochnick. Following a 2004 leadership change, CESR is now headed by Eitan Felner, a former director of B'Tselem and previous chair of the Israeli Section of Amnesty International.[5] FUNDING According to its website, CESR was established on a grant of "a little over $100,000 from the MacArthur Foundation and the Echoing Green Foundation [...and] currently manages an annual budget of well over half a million dollars."[6] In 2004, CESR received a $435,000 grant from the Ford Foundation[7] and has also received funds from the Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation, Samuel Rubin Foundation, and the Life Foundation as well as substantial donations from Elizabeth Benjamin, Carol Bernstein Ferry, and Claude Welch. CESR AT THE UN CESR produces articles, fact-sheets, and reports on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and also organizes conferences and teach-ins on topics such as "Palestinian Refugees and the Right of Return" and "Great Expectations, Bitter Realities: Human Rights Abuse and Economic Decline under the Oslo Process." In addition, CESR's special consultative status with the UN Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights has enabled it to provide reports and oral testimonies to the UN including the discredited and now defunct UN Commission on Human Rights. CESR'S COOPERATION WITH OTHER NGOS CESR coordinates research projects on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from its New York City and Gaza regional offices with a variety of organizations, including LAW, Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, B'Tselem, Palestinian Ministry of Education, UNRWA, Birzeit University, The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Defense of Children International/Palestine Section, as well as Caritas, Center on Housing Rights and Evictions, and PENGON. As past NGO Monitor reports have documented, many of these NGOs are active in promoting the Durban strategy of demonization against Israel. In October 2001, together with over 200 NGOs and individuals, including Christian Peacemaker Teams, Grassroots International, Israel Committee Against House Demolitions-USA, MADRE, US Campaign to Stop the Wall, and Friends of Sabeel-North America, CESR helped to create U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. This organization spearheads the divestment campaign, promotes the "right" of return and perpetuates extreme anti-Israel rhetoric, for example attacking Israel's disengagement from Gaza as "a prelude to consolidating Apartheid."[8] CESR formerly employed Lucy Mair, who, as documented in a previous NGO Monitor report, has written for Electronic Intifada and is currently employed by Human Rights Watch as a researcher on Israel/Palestine issues. Mair contributed to CESR reports to the UN, coordinated protests against Israeli officials, and organized events which promoted a decidedly one-sided and highly distorted view of the conflict. THE PRIMACY OF THE ANTI-ISRAEL AGENDA In the introduction to one report entitled "Violations of the Right to Education During the Al-Aqsa Intifada," CESR claims that the so-called 'second intifada' "led to the most comprehensive Israeli military and economic siege ever experienced in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT)."[9] Through a selective application of human rights norms, CESR emphasizes the Palestinian right to education, while making no mention of Israel's right to defend its citizens from Palestinian terrorist attacks. A 2001 report submitted to UN ECOSOC, entitled "Under Siege: Israeli Human Rights Violations in Palestine," highlights the primacy of CESR's political agenda. The report asserts that "...while Israel's occupation is the underlying cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the current systematic violations of economic, social and cultural rights in the OPT derive from Israel's interrelated policies of [...] closure, curfew and siege."[10] By rewriting the history of the conflict, and grounding its attacks on Israel in human-rights terminology, CESR exploits the "halo-effect" surrounding human rights NGOs to advance a highly biased, pro-Palestinian narrative. In a highly contradictory fashion, CESR criticizes IDF actions, while cynically justifying Palestinian violence as an "expression of Palestinian frustration and rage over the accelerated loss of land and freedom under the Oslo process, a period that was supposed to bring peace and improved living conditions."[11] In summary, CESR's political agenda, shrouded in the rhetoric of "social justice through human rights," consistently serves to delegitimize Israel by erasing the context of terrorism and promoting the Palestinian narrative, while absolving the Palestinians of accountability. Instead of advocating for "social justice using human rights tools and strategies," CESR exploits the "halo-effect" of human rights work in order to advance the strategy of demonization proclaimed in the 2001 Durban conference. This report was sent to the following officials at the Ford Foundation
for comment. As of publication, we have received no response:
Footnotes: [1] http://cesr.org/about
Contact NGO Monitor by mail@ngo.monitor.org or go to their website: www.ngo-monitor.org |
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SUPPORT THE SDF
Posted by Steven Plaut, June 19, 2006. |
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(This is a reprint of an older piece) Let us emphasize that Sderot is in pre-1967 Israel, well within the Green Line. It is not a "settlement", unless one considers Tel Aviv and Haifa also to be settlements. I hereby propose the organization of the Sderot Defense Forces (SDF). The SDF will be a militia entirely operated by and manned by the residents of Sderot. Its function will be to retaliate whenever Sderot is attacked. The SDF will be equipped with heavy artillery, tanks, rockets, jets and a battleship. An aircraft carrier might be a nice addition down the road, as would be heavy air bombers. Whenever Sderot is attacked, the SDF will saturate the Gaza strip with rockets, bombs and shells. Israel will not be held responsible. The Israeli government can shrug its shoulders and say: Hey, that ain't us bombing Gaza. Any Gaza residents getting killed or hurt from the retaliation shelling will be the responsibility of the PLO. The SDF will not be answerable to the Israeli government. Just like the Israeli government has washed its hands of any responsibility for the security of Sderot and abandoned any military role in retaliating for attacks on Sderot, so the SDF will announce that it is not automatically going to respond to any calls for help from Israel, nor will it automatically support defense efforts by Israel. A single Kassam, mortar shell, katyusha, suicide bomber or large rock used by the PLO or its affiliates in Gaza to attack Sderot will result in the saturation bombing of the entire Gaza Strip by the SDF. Olmert need not worry, because there will be no Jews or Israeli soldiers there to risk getting hit or to be blamed. If the Gaza Strip simply is emptied out of population due to the retaliation shelling, well, that is no worse a consequence than Sderot being emptied out as a result of Oslo cowardice and defeatism. You might want to fax the proposal to your favorite Israeli politician. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist,
a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author
of "The Scout." He frequently comments -- both seriously and
satirically -- on Israeli politics and the left wing academic
community. His website address is
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EMERGENCY REQUEST FOR THE JEWS OF UGANDA
Posted by Sandy Rosen-Hazen, June 19, 2006. |
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This is from "Sjimon den Hollander" Be sure to visit my Web Site to see more information and photos of
the Abayudaya Community, at:
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Dear friends, Shavuot is just a few weeks behind us. At "Mattan Torah", most nations rejected G-d's offer of His Divine word and guideline towards a meaningful and holy lifestyle. The Jewish people however said "yes", and since then they have carried on the torch of Torah-light. But some souls who were also gathered at Mount Sinai, and who also replied with a "yes" to the Divine offer, are still forced to carry this torch largely on their own. They do not have Rabbis, they are not counted for minyan when visiting "regular" synagogues, they don't get the same spiritual support as we receive. 
It is sad that too many of our letters are about emergencies. Before we address the imminent needs of the Putti community (for more information on the community, see below) let us also mention the good things that are happening. First of all, despite all hardships, the Jewish community of Putti has grown in strength and number. There are daily classes of Jewish learning in the newly built Jewish school "Etz Chayyim", both for children and adults. The community has been an inspiration to other groups such as the one in Nairobi, Kenya led by Ms. Wanjiku Ngugi. This Torah-endeavoring group is now sending their children all the way to Putti, where they board with Ugandan families and receive Jewish education. People are more determined than ever to learn Torah, and join the Jewish people. It is up to us to support them as they do not have the means to fulfill these goals on their own. Another blessing was the recent birth of a third daughter to Enosh, the "Ribbi" (the main teacher) of the congregation. Unfortunately, after a healthy life's start, both baby Shalva and mother Shira became ill and had been hospitalized. Thank G-d, they are now recovering, but our prayers and support are still needed. In general the health situation has been far from good in the community, some of the Kenyan girls that were sent to Putti for Jewish education have fallen seriously ill, and this is partially due to the recent drought and severe food shortage that had struck the region. Even though the rains have returned, the vast majority of the crops had perished including many fruit trees that are needed to feed families. It is very important that new trees be planted soon, as they have a much greater chance of surviving droughts than other crops. Despite this drawback, the She'erit Israelites of Putti are trying to restore their daily lives. However, for the children and vocational students the next term has begun (in Putti the school year is divided into four terms), meaning tuitions are due again. Most families are not able to pay these dues. They have been depending on our support, and because donations have been failing lately, many of the children have been dismissed from school. The new Jewish school is now at the point of becoming registered as an official school, licensed within the district. We are hoping you will help us provide the necessary $3,000 fee towards this goal. 
The Putti children have been deprived of their education due to lack of money. Each term, when the monies run low, the children are sent home. They cannot return until the fees are paid. This has been a recurring issue each school term. We believe that this should and need not be. A better situation would be if we could raise enough funds among our supporters for a year's budget, so that when the new school term begins, we know that their education is secured. Without this much needed support, the children are now home, unable to prepare for their end-of-term tests and exams. Therefore, it is our hope to raise enough money to last for a year ahead, so this situation can be improved once and for all. Our target now is to raise $50,000 worth of donations. This amount could take care of all school education and materials, most emergency food and health aid, newly planted trees, as well as Jewish educational material and religious assistance. We only have a small circle of sponsors at this moment. Magen Yisrael is run by two or three (and in need for an accountant!). We really depend on your support and ask you to refer us to other interested people. This plea is not just about money. It is about embracing sincere and dedicated fellow Torah believers. Let's hope that very soon our brothers and sisters of Uganda will find a valid Bet Din, be accepted in the cradle of the Jewish people, and admitted into the land of Israel. G-d willing may it happen in the near future. Please be so kind, to do whatever you can, at least by forwarding
this e-mail to your friends.
Tax deductible donations can be written to: Magen Yisrael & sent to:
Putti, an Unknown Jewish Village in Uganda In the Mbale region of Uganda (East Africa) there are five scattered villages where the people live Jewish lives. They and their ancestors have been doing so ever since 1928 when their leader, Semei Kakungulu, inspired thousands of people to follow the laws of the Torah. These five villages are the remaining settlements of what was initially a large and strong movement. Over the years missionary activity and persecution have decimated the Jewish communities. Eventually these "Abayudaya" (Ugandan for "Jews") came into contact with Jews of the West, and were introduced to their traditions, rituals and history. Most of these settlements have been adopted by American support organizations. However, until recently the village of Putti (being a remote settlement, with no running water or electricity) was without any help or assistance. Sjimon den Hollander was introduced to this cause and visited the community almost three years ago. He was deeply moved by the people's dedication, their strong adherence to the Torah and Mitzvot (commandments), their love for Judaism, Israel and the Jewish people, as well as their joyful and positive approach of life. At the same time, he was affected by the severe poverty, the constant struggle with hunger, drought, famine and disease. Sjimon started a non-for-profit organization to support the community of Putti. This support organization is called Magen Yisrael, Shield of Israel, and is run by just a few volunteers. Initially, Magen Yisrael has mostly focused on raising funds for education, but it has also financed the purchase of a small solar panel, fruit trees, artemesinin (anti-malaria) plants and other projects. In addition, religious material was donated, such as prayer books, chumashim, a few tallitot and mezuzot, and a paper printed Torah scroll, as not enough funding for a real Sefer Torah had been found yet. Even though the community was aware that a paper scroll is not a valid Sefer Torah, nevertheless when it arrived, the whole community danced with it through the entire night! The needs are enormous and there is much that can be done. We of Magen Yisrael are seeking money for educational needs, as we believe that education is the primary tool for the new generation to grow out of their vicious cycle of poverty. But of course this is not the only means to improve the quality of life. For instance, we would like to purchase a water well that is presently being offered for sale, and build a fish pond to provide a better source of protein. Such a pond could be connected to a mikwe, combining physical and religious goals. It would save the women from immersing in the river, something that can be hazardous due to snakes, or diseases like bilharzia. Additional steps we seek to undertake are: the introduction of a weaving loom, planting more fruit trees (as they are hardier and more capable of surviving droughts than other forms of crops), providing better learning materials, as well as solar cooking ovens (so less trees have to be cut for fuel). The small Jewish community of Putti, Uganda, has been practicing Judaism despite hardships, poverty, persecutions and missionary activities from churches that offer financial aid in return for joining another religion. Having chosen to be part of the Jewish people, this community especially suffered heavily under the persecution of Dictator Idi Amin. With their bare hands, brick-by-brick, the community in Putti has recently built a new synagogue and a Jewish day school. Their most cherished dream is to undergo a long awaited official conversion. Also they are looking forward to the opportunity of one day (G-d willing) joining their fellow Jews in Israel. The people of Putti have identified themselves as Jews sharing our traditions and beliefs, our history and destiny. In their hardships, are we willing and capable to identify ourselves with them? Sjimon den Hollander
Contact Sandy Rosen-Hazen at Sandy@israel.net
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ANTI-SEMITES' SELF PITY; TRUTH CRAWLS AFTER FLEET-FOOTED LIES
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 19, 2006. |
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ANTI-SEMITES' SELF-PITY In self-pity and self-justification, anti-Semites have adopted a self-righteous line for brushing off rejection of their complaints about Israel. They lament that whoever criticizes Israel is dismissed as being anti-Semitic. Some fellow Jews do reject certain criticism of Israel that way. Most accept reasonable criticism. The lament is false, because the criticism is solely against Israeli self-defense. It is not a factual and thoughtful review of Israeli policies in general -- it's anti-Israel. Much of the world has piggybacked on existing scapegoating of the Jewish people. This fulfills some unhealthy psychological need. People prefer to avoid grappling with real problems, and to elevate themselves to superior moral status by pulling the scapegoat down. When raw anti-Semitism went out of favor, the anti-Semites substituted Israel, the so-called Jewish state, as the object of their verbal aggression. Verbal aggression it is! The media distorts the nature of jihad, especially of its manifestation in the Arab-Israel conflict, until at least most Europeans think Israel is oppressing the Arabs, instead of the reverse. Those Europeans may not intend to be antisemitic, but their views have the same effect as if they were. On the Internet, people tirelessly devote themselves to demonizing Israel and the Jewish people. Whatever evil the Arabs commit or plan, they attribute to "the Jews." The canaille accepts every canard. Muslim clerics and other antisemites fabricate new grievances against Israel. Some of their claims are not just false but ridiculous. They depend on credulity for credence. When people start to catch on to Arab machinations, the Muslim Arabs and other antisemites deny the conclusion, tracing it to an alleged "Zionist propaganda machine." Meanwhile, the poor Jewish people in the US mostly have appeasement-minded media, and in Israel have mostly anti-Zionist media. In Israel, the major media usually favor the immediate Arab territorial goals, "affirmative" discrimination against Jews, violation of civil liberties of observant Jews, and tolerance of massive Arab lawbreaking. Some "Zionist propaganda machine!" It fits the myth of Jewish domination, created by those who dominate or intimidate the Jews. HOMELAND SECURITY The Homeland Security Dept. has a large budget. Each state's politicians try to tap it for economic and therefore political reasons, not for security. Since New York City and D.C. have the most targets, they warrant the most security measures. But the Dept. grants patronage as much as security. Some New Yorkers' complaints, however, refer to budget cuts unfairly, since that City's cuts were proportionately less than others'. Their analysis is hazy. We need more skepticism and scrutiny of government budgets. TRUTH CRAWLS AFTER FLEET-FOOTED LIES Taking PM Olmert's policy at his word, Contributing Editor David Twersky wrote that Israel would "unilaterally re-deploy to new lines of its own choosing. In real terms, this would involve a significant withdrawal from most of the W. Bank... to lines defined by the route of the security barrier being built to separate" Arab areas from Israeli ones (NY Sun, 6/2, Op.-Ed.). The State Dept. has been sending agents to guide Israel to those new lines of "its own choosing." Israel has changed some of the route to suit the State Dept., which wants a total withdrawal. How is it that the Contributing Editor does not know that? Why does he repeat the rationalizations given by the Olmert regime, false to start with and proven false subsequently? Could it be that the Sun favors the Olmert policy as it stands, rather than as it is stated? Note the euphemism, "re-deploy," as if it is not both a military withdrawal and an abandonment of Jewish patrimony to which Israel has a better claim than do the Arabs. Although the policy is stated as one of population separation, vacant areas contiguous to Jewish areas are to be put on the far side of the fence, too. The military folly of ceding territory to a genocidal enemy makes Israeli policy about as anti-Israel as can be imagined. The malicious intent of ethnic cleansing is made clear by the barrier's delineation in such a way as to leave various Jewish communities just on the wrong side of it, or mostly surrounded by hostile Arabs, or penned in on low ground while the Arabs can and would pick them off from the high ground. They would not officially be designated for uprooting, but in view of how little the Army protects them, and how much it fails to let them protect themselves, the effect is to make them flee. This policy shows that although Israel is run by Jews, its leaders are only superficially Jewish and detest those who are profoundly Jewish, the settlers. ISRAEL PILES BLUNDER UPON BLUNDER Former CIA director Woolsey analyzed the Gaza abandonment as a major blunder by Israel. He explains that the proposal to uproot several times as many people from Judea-Samaria, would be several times as bad. The earlier abandonment of the Lebanon Security Zone left Hizbullah entrenched at the border. That seemed merely a nuisance, until Hizbullah got 14,000 rockets, of which the newer ones can reach Tel Aviv. (The Gaza Arabs are extending the range of their rockets, which they fire regularly at Israel.) Hizbullah has become a strategic menace to Israel (Arutz-7, 5/31). From nuisance to strategic threat. What folly, by Israel! Israel appeases and sacrifices for Arab aggression. Why not uproot some Arabs? ISRAELI MEDIA LIABLE FOR LIBEL After some Jewish families moved into property in Hebron purchased from Arabs, the sellers claimed the sales papers were forged. Haaretz and Yediot journalists submitted accurate reports, but their editors revised them in order to side with the Arab claims. The Supreme Court ordered the Jews out until the matter was investigated. Investigation apparently upheld the purchasers' version (as it almost invariably does, for Arab denial is an old trick.) The defamed Jews sued the newspapers and won damages. HEBREW UNIVERSITY VS. NATIONAL SECURITY Leftist agitation at Hebrew U. got the University to cancel a special program for intelligence agents. The opposing faculty claimed they feared the homogeneity of such classes. Prof. Stephen Plaut calls that a lame excuse for censorship and hatred of the Jewish state, most of whose social studies faculties are homogenous -- radical left (5/31). NOW OLMERT POLICY TO BE IMPLEMENTED IN ONE STEP Prof. Plaut surmises that the government is afraid that a pilot project would demonstrate the policy to be a failure. The government avoided test runs with Oslo, too (Op. Cit.). Gaza was a failed pilot project. Some ideology that persists in the teeth of failure! Is this really ideology or corruption or neurosis? The corruption and the neurosis probably result in the ideology, and the ideology pre-conditions people to become neurotic about it. Anything not to admit intellectual bankruptcy. WHY NEGOTIATIONS DON'T WORK Negotiations with Islamists don't work. The usual explanation for this failure is that lack unity. The more important reason is that their theology repudiates compromise. They would rather suffer from existing arrangements than feel humiliated by having recognized the infidels' legitimacy and given them something. Al-Qaeda doesn't seek negotiations. Besides, it demands that the West have nothing to do with the Muslim world. Hamas doesn't want to negotiate, refuses to recognize Israel. Hizbullah joined the government of Lebanon, but makes only minor compromises. Arafat retained popularity by symbolizing resistance to ultimate recognition of Israel, while Westerners thought he was being just impractical by not making any gains for his people (Jewish Political Chronicle, 5/2006, p.10 from David Ignatius, Wash. Post, 4/28). The West is handling the jihadists unproductively. They must be fought and defeated, not pressed to negotiate and offered concessions. They are unrelenting. They also find that the more they hold off negotiating, the more they are offered. Iran (and N. Korea) exploit the West's hope to negotiate, to get action against them deferred until too late. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
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LET'S CALL A SPADE, A SPADE
Posted by B'nai Elim, June 1, 2006. |
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This was written by Michael Devolin. It is archived at http://bnaielim.org/devolin061806.htm |
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I will never be a member of the Christian Peacemaker Teams, not because I'm no longer a Christian, nor will I ever be a member of Amnesty International, not because I've never been in jail, but rather because I cannot, in good conscience, abide the inverse morality common to both these organizations. The self-appointed and self-proclaimed "messiah" James Loney is a perfect example of that wild imprudence James Bisset, former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia (1990-1992), refers to when he writes, "Obsessed with the protection of individual rights, they seem willing to risk violating the collective rights of their fellow citizens." Their anarchic and esoteric ethics have goaded them into that absurd, intellectual realm where kindness is rewarded with cruelty, and cruelty rewarded with kindness. I attended the Caravan of Freedom meeting in Belleville, Ontario. I was expecting to hear from these "messiahs" how unfair the Canadian justice system is, how cruel and callous our police and intelligence services, and in that regard, I was not mistaken. While articulating the outrage he felt at the thought of Muslims being incarcerated in this country on the basis of National Security Certificates, one of their organizers actually compared our present Canadian democracy to the phobic "McCarthyism" manifested in the United States during the darkest days of the Cold War. What I didn't hear -- what I expected to hear from those whose entire premise for maligning my country's laws and statutes they loudly aggrandize as being based on objectivity -- is any discussion regarding Muslims and their much equivocated proximity to that invidious, shamelessly anti-Jewish and religious ideology which precipitates terrorism, namely Islam. Gordon Nickel, who has a PhD in the commentaries on the Koran and teaches in British Columbia, points out, "Muslims seeking to find a peaceful message in the Koran must fight not only the plain meaning of the Koran's text and the current fashion for militancy, but also the arrow of Muslim history." And this is the faux pas (and I do mean social blunder, especially on the part of lime-lighters like James Loney) of fools like Christian Peacemaker Teams and Amnesty International: for all their shouting from housetops and their many beaming, angelic countenances assertively and conspicuously thrust before attentive media cameras, they have yet to drum up enough courage to publicly identify Islam as being the root cause of even this inconvenient and "Canadian" dilemma their Muslim friends now find themselves in, let alone the terrorism they have been accused of planning. To continually and thoughtlessly exculpate the religion of Islam by way of excoriating the Western world's attempts, whether military or otherwise, at stemming the tide of its attendant violence and bloodshed is to empower those who advocate Islamic terrorism; is to hinder those brave policemen, intelligence operatives, and soldiers who have signed up to extirpate it from within our borders. "In our countries, religion is the sole source of education, and is the only spring from which that terrorist drank until his thirst was quenched. He was not born a terrorist, and did not become a terrorist overnight. Islamic teachings played a role in weaving his ideological fabric, thread by thread, and did not allow other sources -- I am referring to scientific sources -- to play a role. It was these teachings that distorted this terrorist and killed his humanity. It was not the terrorist who distorted the religious teaching and misunderstood them, as some ignorant people claim." These are the words of Wafa Sultan, an ex-Muslim from the Middle East who now resides in the United States. Her story is unique in that she has found within herself the courage to repudiate publicly Islam in its entirety, precisely because she has realized from her own experience that terrorism is not tangential from Islam but organic of Islam. She has chosen to call a spade a spade, as the saying goes, which is totally out of step with the many "political correct" and lazy journalists of the West who have wilfully camouflaged with endless equivocations the utter horror of Koran-evoked violence. Like the Beslan massacre and the countless suicide bombings in Israel, as nothing more than mere and incidental foibles of errant Muslims driven to such barbarism by dispossession and political zeal. Those who have been following "the arrow of Muslim history," from Islam's bloody beginnings to its bloody present day manifestations will know that, conversely, the political zeal of non-Muslims (the Jews of ancient Israel included) dispossessed by Islamic expansionism have consistently and tragically been efficacious in precipitating similar Islamic violence. The Armenian genocide is but one horrifying example. Consider these facts next time you hear James Loney lamenting for his "oppressed" Muslim friends. As for those Muslims who, while incarcerated in Canada, wrote such a lovely letter on Loney's behalf when he was held hostage in Iraq, remember that being behind bars has humbled many a man to levels of virtue previously unknown him. "Good behavior" has always been a great bargaining tool for prisoners seeking conditional release. It's what these "moderate" Muslims do with their "free time" that concerns our CSIS and our police services. Unctuous critics like James Loney refuse to acknowledge the real and present danger these particular Muslims pose. As James Bisset points out, "The first crime they commit may be the detonation of a bomb that not only kills innocent victims, but also themselves. The aim of counterterrorist activity today is prevention; once the act is done, its too late." "An ideology extends wherever it has believers. These are the actual limits or foci of extremist Islamic terrorism." -- Ajai Sahni For information on B'nai Elim membership, contact membership@bnaielim.org |
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ALAS! WHERE ARE THESE MEN TODAY?
Posted by Likud-Herut, June 19, 2006. |
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This article was written by Yehuda Avner and appeared in the Jerusalem Post. Yehuda Avner served on the personal staff of five prime ministers, including Menachem Begin. Contact him at avner28@netvision.net.il |
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There is irony in the thought that were Menachem Begin alive today he would be saddened, indeed outraged, at Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's insistence - in consort with the US and the EU - that Hamas's political legitimacy be conditioned, inter alia, on its recognition of Israel's right to exist. "Right to exist?" I can hear the late prime minister roundly chastising his younger successor who declares himself to be a Begin disciple. "Are you telling me, Ehud, that our right to exist in Eretz Yisrael has to be sanctioned for political purposes by an intrinsically anti-Semitic, murderous Palestinian Arab terrorist organization? Have you lost your Jewish self-respect? Where is your Jewish memory?" Menachem Begin had a surfeit of both - Jewish self-respect and memory. He had an all-encompassing grasp of Jewish history. Instinctively his memory went back thousands of years and his vision forward thousands of years. Jewish nostalgia fed his soul; it nurtured his deepest convictions. SO WHEN, on the first day of his premiership in 1977, he was waylaid by a tall, debonair, rakishly good-looking Englishman in a bow tie and a perfectly pitched BBC announcer's voice, and saucily asked whether he looked forward to a time when the Palestinians would recognize Israel, his jaw tightened in restrained Jewish anger. But honed as he was by years of legal training, he answered with the composed demeanor of a practiced jurist, saying, "Traditionally, there are four major criteria of statehood under international law. One - an effective and independent government. Two - an effective and independent control of the population. Three - a defined territory. And four - the capacity to freely engage in foreign relations. Israel is in possession of all four attributes and, hence, is a fully fledged sovereign state and a fully accredited member of the United Nations." "But, surely, you would insist, would you not, that the relevant Palestinian organizations recognize Israel as a sine qua non for negotiations with them?" persisted the fellow. "Certainly not! Those so-called relevant organizations are gangs of murderers bent on destroying the State of Israel. We will never conduct talks about our own destruction." "And were they to recognize Israel's existence - would you then negotiate with them?" pressed the correspondent. "No, sir!" "Why not?" "Because I don't need Palestinian recognition for my right to exist." TWO HOURS later Menachem Begin stood at the podium of the Knesset, presenting his new cabinet. He began by dryly outlining the democratic processes that led to the changing of the guard, from Labor to Likud. And then, in recollection perhaps, of his acerbic exchange with the BBC man, he began talking about Israel's right to exist. "Our right to exist - have you ever heard of such a thing?" he declared, passion creeping into his voice. "Would it enter the mind of any Briton or Frenchman, Belgian or Dutchman, Hungarian or Bulgarian, Russian or American, to request for its people recognition of its right to exist?" He glared at his audience and wagged a finger, stilling every chattering voice in the Knesset chamber. And now, using his voice like a cello, sonorous and vibrant, he drove on: "Mr. Speaker: We were granted our right to exist by the God of our fathers at the glimmer of the dawn of human civilization four thousand years ago. Hence, the Jewish people have an historic, eternal and inalienable right to exist in this land, Eretz Yisrael, the land of our forefathers. We need nobody's recognition in asserting this inalienable right. And for this inalienable right, which has been sanctified in Jewish blood from generation to generation, we have paid a price unexampled in the annals of nations." Then he rose up on his toes, his shoulders squared, thumped the podium, and perorated in a voice that was thunder, "Mr. Speaker: From the Knesset of Israel, I say to the world, our very existence per se is our right to exist!" A spontaneous applause rose from the benches. Many got to their feet in full-throated acclaim. It was a stirring Knesset moment - a moment of instinctive self-recognition affirming that though the State of Israel was then but 29 years old, its roots in Eretz Yisrael ran 4,000 years deep. THREE WEEKS later, the very same issue cropped up once more when prime minister Begin first met president Jimmy Carter in the White House. As their encounter drew to a close, the president handed the premier a piece of heavy bond White House stationary on which the formal communiqu to be released in their name was drafted. "I trust this will meet with your approval," said Carter in his reedy Georgian voice. Begin ran his eye over the one page text, and said, "Totally acceptable, Mr. President, but for one sentence." Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, an unruffled man as a rule, who had invested much effort in drafting the document, became momentarily agitated. After a year at the job he had perfected a manner of drafting such joint statements designed to convey as little meaning as possible. "And what might that be?" he asked. "Please delete the sentence which reads, 'The United States affirms Israel's inherent right to exist.'" President Carter's steely pale-blue eyes flared in surprise. "It would be incompatible with my responsibilities as president of the United States were I to omit this commitment to your country," he said. "To the best of my knowledge, every Israeli prime minister has asked for this public pledge." "I sincerely appreciate you sentiment, Mr. President," said Mr. Begin, his tone deeply reflective as if reaching down into generations of memory, "But it would be equally incompatible with my responsibilities as prime minister of Israel were I not to ask you to erase that sentence." "But why?" "Because our Jewish state needs no American affirmation of our right to exist. Our Hebrew bible established that right millennia ago. Never, throughout the centuries, did we ever abandon or forfeit that right. Therefore, sir, we alone, the Jewish people - no one else - are responsible for our country's right to exist." So yes, Menachem Begin would, indeed, have had what to say to Ehud Olmert, were he around today. Never would he have put on the table a demand for recognition of Israel's right to exist as a quid pro quo for negotiation. To him, this was a high ideological principle, a fundamental axiom, an absolute given, a natural corollary of his all-embracing view of Jewry's extraordinary history. Ehud, take it out. Contact Likud-Herut at info@likud-herut.org.uk |
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CONVERGENCE 101
Posted by Ellen W. Horowitz, June 18, 2006. |
Ellen Horowitz lives in the Golan Heights, Israel with her husband and six children. She is a painter and columnist for Israelnationalnews.com. email: ellen@artfromzion.com This cartoon appeared in Arutz Sheva
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AHMADINEJAD RANTS AND THE SILENCE IS DEAFENING
Posted by Fern Sidman, June 18, 2006. |
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The history of the Jewish people is replete with scourges, haters and mass murderers of our people. The latest menace to our people is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He spews forth his vitriol against Israel and the Jewish people on a daily basis and has threatened to use his nuclear arsenal at will. There is no question that this latest madman must be taken seriously. In his translation of a speech to the "World Without Zionism" conference held for students in October of 2005, Nazila Fathi of The New York Times' Tehran bureau reported Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying, regarding Israel, in part: Our dear Imam (referring to Ayatollah Khomeini) said that the occupying regime (Israel)must be wiped off the map and this was a very wise statement. We cannot compromise over the issue of Palestine. Is it possible to create a new front in the heart of an old front. This would be a defeat and whoever accepts the legitimacy of this regime has in fact, signed the defeat of the Islamic world. Our dear Imam targeted the heart of the world oppressor in his struggle, meaning the occupying regime. I have no doubt that the new wave that has started in Palestine, and we witness it in the Islamic world too, will eliminate this disgraceful stain from the Islamic world. But we must be aware of tricks. Ahmadinejad also claimed in the speech that the issue with Palestine would be over "the day that all refugees return to their homes [and] a democratic government elected by the people comes to power", and denounced attempts to normalize relations with Israel, condemning all Muslim leaders who accept the existence of Israel as "acknowledging a surrender and defeat of the Islamic world." The speech also indicated that the Iranian President considered Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip to be a trick, designed to gain acknowledgement from Islamic states. In a rally held two days later, Ahmadinejad declared that his words reflected the views of the Iranian people, adding that Westerners are free to comment, but their reactions are invalid. In December of 2005 and January and May of 2006 Ahmadinejad made controversial statements which denied the veracity of the Holocaust and criticized European laws against Holocaust denial. CNN and other media outlets reported that he stated concerning the Holocaust that "they have invented a myth that Jews were massacred." In an interview with the German publication Der Spiegel, Ahmadinejad was asked, "Are you still saying that the Holocaust is just 'a myth'?" He responded, "I will only accept something as truth if I am actually convinced of it." In the same interview, he later stated, "We oppose every type of crime against any people. But we want to know whether this crime actually took place or not.. If it did not occur, then the Jews have to go back to where they came from". In an interview with Iranian state television's Arabic-language satellite channel, Al-Alam, on December 8, 2005, Ahmadinejad referred to Israel as a "tumor", and suggested that it should be relocated to Europe. His other quotes concerning Israel and the Jews are as follows: "You believe the Jews were oppressed, why should the Palestinian Muslims have to pay the price?" If these statements were not enough proof of the danger of the current Iranian regime, it has been recently reported by the Iranian news service that Mohammed Ali Ramim, a senior advisor to Ahmadinejad told students during a visit to the town of Rasht in Iran that, "Jews are a filthy people, and that is why they have been accused throughout history of spreading deadly disease and plagues." Ramin, an alleged historian who serves as the president's most senior aide, is believed to be the man behind the regime's recent statements that the Holocaust is a myth. Ramin went on to say, "Historically, there are many accusations against the Jews. For example, it was said that they were the source for such deadly disease as the plague and typhus. This is because the Jews are very filthy people. For a time people also said that they poisoned water wells belonging to Christians and thus killed them." Ramin also reiterated past statements made by Ahmadinejad regarding the Holocaust, saying it was the cause for the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, and claimed that Israel is responsible for the Middle East crisis. "So long as Israel exists in the region there will never be peace and security in the Middle East," he said adding, "so the resolution of the Holocaust issue will end in the destruction of Israel". The Jerusalem Post reported on 6/16/06 that Ahmadinejad said during a news conference following a meeting with Chinese president Hu Jintao, that, "I think we have sufficiently talked about this matter and these Holocaust events need to be further investigated by independent and impartial parties." He added that, "An event that has influenced so many diplomatic and political equations of the world needs to investigated and researched by impartial and independent groups." To those who are students of history, we know that this kind of propaganda is not new. It has been utilized against the Jews since time immemorial. We know that Hitler and his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels honed this practice to a fine art. We also know that the current Iranian administration is well adept in this modality as well. We who know the truth, know that this kind of incendiary rhetoric is designed to create a dramatic rise in Jew hatred, thus facilitating their final goal, the eradication of the State of Israel and of the Jewish people. Yes, it is yet the latest round of modern day Hitlers. We are used to this. We must tell the Iranian madman that we're not going anywhere. We must tell him and the world that no one will eradicate the State of Israel and extricate the Jewish people from their home. And to those who believe that this "blather" should not be taken seriously are in fact denying the real threat that this latest round of Jew haters represents. And we ask, "What does the world have to say about all this? Where are all the bold and unequivocal denunciations and condemnations from the leaders of the free world?" The answer is clear to those who wish to see it. The world cares little for the Jewish people and the Land of Israel. This is not the first time in history that this kind of anti-Jewish invective has been promulgated by state leaders. This kind of anti-Jewish canard and propaganda has become standard fare for the wide variety of Jew haters that fill the world. It is time to clarify our position and to announce without fear and trepidation what our position is. The modern Jewish State of Israel did not come into being because we needed a safe asylum for the thousands of survivors of Hitler's Holocaust. The Jews of Europe did not come to a country that did not belong to them and displace it's Arab population. The Jews of Europe and from around the world, came back to their homeland. They did not come as "occupiers" but they returned as the sole legitimate owners of a land that was given to them by the G-d of Israel. Did the world feel sorry for the Jews and "allow" them to call "Palestine" their home and rename it Israel? We will never know the true motivation of the UN vote that established Israel as a Jewish State on May 14, 1948. We do however, know that the current state of affairs between the "Palestinians" and the Israelis has nothing to do with the Holocaust. We do know that it is yet another diatribe aimed at delegitimizing the right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel. We do know that the Holocaust did indeed occur and has been documented and there is no need to investigate it's authenticity. Just ask any Holocaust survivor. We do know that our claim and ownership of the Land of Israel was given to us by the Almighty G-d of Israel and our ownership is declared before any other commandment. One need only look at the first verse in the Book of Genesis, "In the beginning G-d created the Heaven and the Earth." The biblical commentator and great Torah giant, Rashi, tells us that this verse establishes the Jewish ownership of the Land of Israel. "If the world will say that we are robbers and stole this land, we know that it was G-d who created the world and it was He who first gave it to Canaanites and then gave it to Bnei Yisroel." It was He who said that "this land shall be yours for as long as the sky remains over the earth." Yet, it is we who must acknowledge this and it is we who must declare to the world that our right to be in this land is from G-d and it is His rule that we must obey. No government or international body can declare our right to ownership of Israel, for the vacillating will of man can be easily refuted or reversed.. It is we who must know that this is the land in which Hashem Yisborach designated as a homeland for us for all time. It is we who must tell this to the nations of the world and to the Iranian dictator. For in the end, it is G-d who we must fear and not man. Ahmadinejad is just the latest in the never ending flow of Jew haters who seek our destruction. In His infinite mercy, it is Hashem alone who allows us to exist. It is Hashem who has brought down and destroyed all those who sought to annihilate His people. It is only through faith and trust in the Almighty G-d of Israel and adherence to His commandments that will see us through this clear and present danger. We must raise our voices in prayer and supplication to the Almighty. Now is the time to gird our loins and prepare to defend our faith. May Hashem give us the strength and courage to overcome our enemies and to do His will. Contact Fern Sidman by email at AriellaH@aol.com |
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PLASTINIAN - PLAST-INIAN, THE PLASTIC LANGUAGE OF THE ARAB MUSLIM 'PALESTINIANS'
Posted by The Reality Show, June 18, 2006. |
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Whether the (so called) 'Palestinian' Arab Muslims are a "nation" that is 39 years old (since 1967) or a bit more than that or even if you believe that they are just another group of Arabs, one thing is certain, they have contributed some vocabulary. Take some PLASTINIAN lessons: Hamas' terrorists greed for higher salaries (2006) = "starving Palestinians". Killing its own people (like Muhammad Al Dura 2000, Rafah 2002 in a cave & now Gaza beach 2006) = "israeli aggression". Arab settlers (at the 1800's and their descendants) = "indigenous Palestinians". Carefully over a lengthy period planned genocide-bombing attacks = "spontaneous desperation". Aiming at babies = "freedom fighting". Hate sermons (from radical Islamofascists at militant mosques) = "national pride". De-legitimizing Jews' roots to their historic home = "self determination". overwhelmingly voting in & supporting terrorists = "moderate majority". The Egyptian born Yasser Arafat, the terror master = "fought for a Palestinian homeland". Putting their kids in front of their machine guns = "stone throwing palestinian kids". A terrorist that blows up innocent unarmed people = "activist" Terrorists mingling with civilians = "israel massacre". Exploiting & abusing IDF's humane weakness in being extra careful in anti-terror operations where civilians are caught in the middle = "palestinian heroes" Contact The Reality Show at therealityshow@mail.com or visit his blogsite: http://lightonthings.blogspot.com |
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THE DEVOLUTION OF REFORM -- RABBI GOLDSTEIN'S NOTE FROM 1923
Posted by Professor Eugene Narrett , June 18, 2006. |
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Studying an old edition of Pirke Avot (NY, Bloch 1956), I came across the following discussion in the notes by Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein. The notes were written in 1923 and have acquired increased relevance, and evidence to support Rabbi Goldstein's comments, since first penned. The comment is to the 12th verse ("make a fence around the Torah") of the first Mishna and is ascribed to the sages of the Great Assembly. Rabbi Goldstein comments: "Through the idea of a 'fence' [around the Torah], Rabbinic Judaism aimed for Jewish saintliness, separateness, and above all self-restraint. This idea of the 'fence' has kept the Jewish people alive. "The weak among the Jews, the Reformers, broke down the fence of self-restraint and in doing that have since necessarily trespassed upon the garden [the fence protects]. They thought if they would make religion easier they would have more observance. The contrary proved to be the case. The more fences they broke down, the more the people wanted broken down until now the garden itself is in danger: the Sabbath is not kept, the holidays are not properly observed, and the Bible itself, the source of all our instruction and inspiration is being case aside by them. The same will be true of the conservatives in this country [America] in another generation or two. The Reformers, originally, were like the conservative synagogues of today." Again, this was written in 1923. Whatever our degree of observance or connection to the Jewish people and a Jewish Israel, the Rabbi's analysis merits reflection. Eugene Narrett has published extensively on American culture and politics and on events pertaining to Israel. His books include "Gathered against Jerusalem" (Writers Club Press), "Israel Awakened" (Author House) and, forthcoming July 04, "Israel and the Endtimes" (www.authorhouse.com). Contact him at Culturtalk@aol.com |
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WHY THE IDF IS INDEED THE 'MOST MORAL ARMY IN THE WORLD
Posted by The Reality Show, June 18, 2006. |
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"...The IDF is the most moral military in the world. There has
never been, and there isn't now, a policy of attacking civilians."
Since Mr. Olmert didn't elaborate too much let the facts speak for themselves: (Not only is Israel never even considering to be acting like its coward murderous Arab Muslim counterparts to target the unarmed, not one Arab Muslim would have survived their military power, but Arab Muslim "Palestinians" prefer targeting the unarmed, the bigger the crowd of the victims the bigger their sick public joy on the Arab street, whereas on the Israeli side, IF there are non combatants civilians caught in the fire the Israelis' grief is tremendous, all that and more, here are a few points about Israel's unique higher moral ground). * In Jenin, the IDF went from door to door, from house to house in an ant's work, well aware of the booby trapped device that encounter them, fully aware that every door might be a trigger to a bomb that would explode on them at any second, or an "innocent" woman carrying hot burning oil to burn the "zionists". Yes, no other nation would be able to stand such high moral grounds in face of those that are the lowest of the lowest in morality, regards to any human life even its own populations. Contact The Reality Show at therealityshow@mail.com or visit his blogsite: http://lightonthings.blogspot.com |
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FINKELSTEIN'S FAN IN ISRAEL
Posted by Steven Plaut, June 17, 2006. |
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In a recent issue of the far-Left web magazine Counterpunch, Neve Gordon, senior lecturer in the Department of Politics and Government at Israel's Ben-Gurion University, again comes to the defense of his admired author Normal Finkelstein, professor of political science at DePaul University. Gordon favorably reviews Finkelstein's new book Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History (University of California Press). Finkelstein is a strange figure for an Israeli academic to be praising. Back on November 18, 2002, Finkelstein gave a lecture at Georgetown University. Four days later the Anti-Defamation League, in a letter to the president of Georgetown, said it was "shocked and troubled" that the university had "sponsored a lecture by a known Holocaust denier and anti-Israeli propagandist, Norman Finkelstein. [The] lecture was a one-sided program, intended to promote hatred of Israel and perpetuate classic anti-Semitic stereotypes." ADL's letter went on to note that "in his highly publicized book, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, Finkelstein argues that the Holocaust "has become a straight-out extortion racket." Finkelstein is well known for his anti-Israel rhetoric and his claims that Jews have exploited the Holocaust to make money. He has said that he "truly honored" Hezbullah fighters from Lebanon for "having inflicted an exceptional and deserving defeat on their foreign occupiers," and that, "I can't imagine why Israel's apologists would be offended by a comparison to the Gestapo..." ADL could have added, among other things, that the New York Times called The Holocaust Industry "a novel variation on the anti-Semitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion"; that historian Peter Novick called it "trash"; and that Gabriel Schoenfeld, author of The Return of Anti-Semitism, labeled Finkelstein's views as "crackpot ideas, some of them mirrored almost verbatim in the propaganda put out by neo-Nazis around the world." ADL could also have mentioned that Finkelstein appeared on the official Hezbollah television network al-Manar, and that he is a popular speaker among German neo-Nazis, one of whom, the wife of the notorious Ernst Zundel, called him the "Jewish David Irving." Gordon and Finkelstein have, of course, some things in common, including an attraction to anti-Israeli terrorists. On February 3, 2002, Israel's ynet reported that "250 left-wing activists violated the Israeli army's orders and entered Ramallah for a meeting with Arafat. ... Neve Gordon ... was photographed with Arafat with hands clasped [see picture]. ... In reply to the question of whether he felt comfortable hugging the chairman of the Palestinian Authority, responsible according to Israel for acts of terror, he replied: 'I don't know who's responsible for the terror attacks, that's what the media says' ..." Gordon, who has written that "Israel's gravest danger today is not the PA or even Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, but the one it faces from within: fascism," (and whom Ma'ariv columnist Ben-Dror Yemini accused (along with Haifa University's Ilan Pappe) of "spread[ing] their articles dripping with anti-Zionist poison all over the world, some of which appear on anti-Semitic websites,") also shares with Norman Finkelstein a Zundel connection. Ernst Zundel, a pamphleteer who has been jailed several times for hate literature, was deported this year from Canada to his native Germany to stand trial for Holocaust denial. On October 27, 2000, his Zundelsite.org posted Gordon's glowing review in The Nation of Finkelstein's earlier book, The Holocaust Industry, in which Gordon opined that "[Finkelstein], and not the Jewish organizations he criticizes, is following the example set by the great Jewish prophets." Zundel prefaces the review by remarking: "I think it is pretty balanced, even though there are a few politically correct hiccoughs." And on November 23, 2002, Zundel approvingly posted another Gordon article from The Nation. In his Counterpunch review of Finkelstein's latest opus, which the publisher demanded that Finkelstein revise after Alan Dershowitz complained and proved that it libeled him, Gordon demurs from "an odd and troubling conclusion: the Jews, Finkelstein implies, are also to blame for the rise of anti-Semitism." But Gordon goes on to praise Finkelstein's attempt to debunk Dershowitz's defense of Israel's human rights record in his The Case for Israel. Finkelstein, in trying to pillory Israel for alleged violations, relies on human rights NGOS like Physicians for Human Rights Israel, whose "crude propaganda," wrote Israeli professor Gerald Steinberg of NGO Monitor, "is seen by many as anti-Semitic, and has prompted the Israeli Medical Association to end all cooperation with this group." Nowhere in the review, of course, does Gordon mention that Finkelstein sympathizes with terrorists and has himself won neo-Nazi admiration, and indeed it would be a case of the pot calling the kettle black. As always, Neve Gordon retains his carte blanche from Ben-Gurion University to conduct his "research" and to "teach" Israeli students. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1129540643087&pagename= JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull "Norman Finkelstein's world" Isi Leibler,
Historically, self-hating Jews besmirching their kinsmen have ranged from apostates in the Middle Ages to communists in Stalinist Russia. Today their successors have assumed pivotal roles in the global campaign to delegitimize Israel. The most recent chapter in the ongoing offensive is Norman Finkelstein's book Beyond Chutzpa, which endeavors to depict Israel as one of the most evil countries in the world. The author also defames Alan Dershowitz, author of the widely acclaimed The Case for Israel. Dershowitz is particularly hated by the anti-Israeli pack because of his impeccable credentials as a champion of human rights. Finkelstein accuses Dershowitz of plagiarizing material for his book from Joan Peters's From Time Immemorial, published over 20 years ago. The accusation is specious, because Dershowitz never used a single phrase or idea from Peters without proper citation. All Dershowitz did was to collate the evidence (including material used by Peters) and employ his professional fort to present a first-rate case for Israel. Indeed, after reviewing the charge of plagiarism, the former presidents of Harvard and Dartmouth both concluded that it was baseless. Finkelstein also accused Dershowitz of trying to suppress his views on the grounds that he expressed surprise that a purportedly reputable publisher like University of California Press would associate itself with so unscholarly a work. But Dershowitz was entirely justified in describing Beyond Chutzpa as a vile, unscholarly anti-Semitic tract. It employs similar techniques that Holocaust revisionists do in seizing upon tiny grains of truth to build a framework of lies, employing myriads of distorted or misleading footnotes to provide a veneer of pseudo scholarship. Peter Novick, whose work criticizing aspects of Holocaust memorial activity was utilized by Finkelstein, described Finkelstein's "scholarship" as "a twenty-first century updating of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a piece of trash." NEVERTHELESS Beyond Chutzpa is likely to confuse those unaware of the extent to which human rights agenda of NGOs as been hijacked and transformed into a vehicle for demonizing Israel. Finkelstein quotes extensively from organizations such as Human Rights Watch, B'Tselem, Physicians for Human Rights, Amnesty, and the Public Committee against Torture which have long track records of bias and employing double standards in relation to Israel. Finkelstein had already assumed the role of a global cult figure among anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli groups prior to the publication of Beyond Chutzpa. In an earlier book, Finkelstein described the "holocaust industry" as "an extortion racket", a vehicle "to crush any dissent, any criticism of the State of Israel." Jewish leaders were referred to as "gangsters" and "crooks." Eli Wiesel was depicted as "the resident clown for the Holocaust circus." He challenged the authenticity of survivors, "If everyone who claimed to be a survivor is one, my mother used to say 'Who did Hitler kill then?'" In subsequent interviews, Finkelstein attacked Leon Uris, author of Exodus alleging that "the chief character was named Ari Ben Canaan because Ari is the diminutive for Aryan." He admired Hizbullah - "The honorable thing now is to show solidarity with Hizbullah as the US and Israel target it for liquidation." Israeli demolitions of terrorist homes are equivalent to the "Nazi destruction of the village of Lidice" (in Czechoslovakia). Being compared to the Gestapo would "flatter" Israel; its human rights record "is interchangeable with that of Saddam Hussein's Iraq." But his most bizarre comments related to Osama bin-Laden: "Regrettably it is payback time for the Americans... We deserve our problems because some things Bin Laden says are true... Bin Laden said 'until we [Moslems] live in security, you are not going to have any security' ... and there is certain rightness in that... Why should we go on merrily with our lives when so much of the world is suffering - with us as the direct and indirect perpetrators?" IN Beyond Chutzpa Finkelstein writes: "From a combination of economic and political power [Jewish American elites] have sprung a mindset of Jewish superiority... From this lethal brew of formidable power, charismatic arrogance, feigned or marginal victimhood, and Holocaust immunity to criticism, has sprung a terrifying recklessness and ruthlessness on the part of American Jewish elites. Alongside Israel, they are the main fomenters of anti-Semitism in the world today. Coddling them is not the answer. They must be stopped." He also claims that "like the Holocaust" anti-Semitism is an ideological weapon to deflect justified criticism of Israel and concomitantly, powerful interests. In its current usage, "anti-Semitism" alongside the "war against terrorism" serve to cloak a "massive assault on international law and human rights." Jewish leaders "resemble stereotypes straight out of Der Sturmer" and are also "de facto agents of a foreign government" and "in service to their Holy State." IN A sane political world one might have assumed that such trash would be relegated to the fringe. Not in todays frenzied anti-Israeli climate where Finkelstein's ravings are boosted, among others, by a long parade of academics of Jewish origin praising his lies and describing his distortions as scholarship. The blurb on the dust jacket of this appalling book includes commendations from Daniel Boyarin of the University of California, Avi Shlaim of Oxford, and of course, Noam Chomsky from MIT. But the most outrageous paeans of praise come from Israeli academics whose universities are sponsored by the state they demonize and supported by contributions from Diaspora Zionists. Thus Hebrew University professor of sociology, Baruch Kimmerling, describes the book as "the most comprehensive systematic and well documented work of its kind... about the daily practices of the occupation and colonization of the Palestinian territories by Israel." In a review of Finkelstein's book in the National Catholic Reporter, Neve Gordon of Ben-Gurion University, who also promotes international war crime tribunals against Israeli military officers, described Beyond Chutzpa as "an attempt to expose how elements in academia have played a role in concealing Israel's abuse... the heated response to his book is just another example of how the literature discussing the new anti-Semitism delegitimizes those who expose Israel's outrageous violations of international law. The major irony in relation to this saga is that Dr. Finkelstein's book, not Dershowitz's, constitute the real case for Israel, that is, for a moral Israel." THE INCREDIBLE damage to Israel's reputation inflicted by renegade Jews has been greatly underestimated. The distortions have already persuaded the average European that Israel represents a greater threat to world peace than Iran or North Korea. We cannot afford this to be extended to the United States. Israel must realize that the battle of ideas is crucial to our future. There are hundreds of talented Israelis and friends of Israel throughout the world who possess the scholarship and communication skills to enable them to make a major contribution. The government should invite the best of them to join in a campaign to reverse the tide. When the poisonous ravings of people like Finkelstein gain credence in the mainstream media, it is surely time to ring the alarm bells. The writer chairs the Diaspora-Israel relations committee of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. He is a veteran international Jewish leader. ileibler@netvision.net.il See also:
Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist,
a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author
of "The Scout." He frequently comments -- both seriously and
satirically -- on Israeli politics and the left wing academic
community. His website address is
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MR. RIEGER AND MR. HOENLEIN, I RECEIVED THIS EMAIL FROM ONE OF YOUR PROFESSIONALS!
Posted by Buddy Macy, June 17, 2006. | ||
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To The United Jewish Communities The Jewish expellees from Gush Katif and northern Samaria, the 60,000 to 100,000 Jews facing possible refugee status, and those people working diligently to help them, deserve much better than this! It is obvious to me that at least one of the Jewish Federation professionals requires a history lesson. The following was written by a Jewish hero, Ben Hecht, and can be found in A Child of the Century (Plume Publishing, May 30, 1985):
The story of your indifference has appeared inter alia on World Net Daily. Called "U.S. Jewish groups refuse aid to evacuees: Residents expelled from Gaza face 'humanitarian crisis'," it was written by Aaron Klein and appeared on the WND website May 23, 2006.
Some weeks ago, I wrote to Howard Rieger to express my outrage at
the silence of the leaders of the Jewish Federation system i dont give a shit what you thinkContact Buddy Macy at vegibud@aol.com |
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AN ISRAEL NOT MEANT TO BE SEEN
Posted by Professor Eugene Narrett, June 17, 2006. |
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The Israel of the headlines reflects the agenda of the silk hats that are running the world into the ground. It is malicious and homicidal slander meant to legimize the expulsion and even the murder of Jews, even to rationalize their mass murder by, say, Iran, armed to the teeth by Germany, France, Russia and others. This target Israel is an intransigent belligerent that has 'stolen' its tiny scrap of a nation from the "Palestinian people," or as the Arabs say, the "Balestinian beeple.' This big lie keeps the attention of many of the multitude away from the obvious facts that successive Israeli governments betray their own people and Judaism too, accepting the segregation and ethnic cleansing of Jews, the destruction of Jewish holy sites, and relentless murderous assaults by Arabs to which only neglible responses are made. Certainly this is a nation that deserves to be destroyed, or so the media moral would seem to be. Let the following paragraphs be an antidote. They describe some highlights of a recent pilgrimage I made to the land and the sights and some of the people I had the pleasure of seeing and being with. I also want to thank Zev and Rochelle of Elon Moreh for their gracious hospitality; they are among the founding settlers of Camp Kadoum ("Kedumim") Itamar and Elon Moreh. |
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For eighteen days beginning May 22, I traveled Israel from Yevul at the Egyptian border to Hispin in the Golan Heights. These travels included large swaths of the hilltop communities in the Shomron and Binyamin regions, the latter being the beautiful ridges and hills northeast of Jerusalem. The first eight days I was with an AFSI (Americans for a Safe Israel) tour, one of the very few groups that regularly visits those places where the cutting edge of the globalists "grand game" intersects with the lives of the people who are its target. The journey's purpose was largely educational, a fact-finding mission that included visits to many new communities some of them refugee camps for those Jews expelled in August 2005 from the towns and farms they had built on the dunes in Gush Katif (the Gaza area), deported in the name of "peace." And we saw the wall in many places; we heard rockets being fired over it and saw one that had recently landed right next to a greenhouse in Netiv Ha Assara which, thanks to the expulsion of the Jews from GK (the ancient Biblical territory of Gerar, Genesis 25) is now on the frontline with global jihad. Far from the lights, press conferences and suave diplomats we also saw the people in these camps. Despite what they have been through, and despite the poverty and terror that the deals of politicians subject them and their children to every day, they are not discouraged but have their eyes set on creating and flourishing future of dignified joy, one day at a time. "Every place we settle we will create a Gush Katif," said Sara, mother of nine children and formerly from Netzarim. "We will return to Gush Katif; and if not us, our children will return." Such people cannot be defeated. The Beauty of the Land and People The land is astonishingly beautiful, with a uniquely stark, colorful, eye-arresting mix of hills, ridges, winding valleys and stream beds. And, yes, wherever Jews have settled and worked the land it is green, from the tomato, mango, date palm and orange plantings in the sun-baked Dead Sea valley, to the wheat fields, vineyards, herbs and flowers of the Negev, to the olive, fig and almond orchards of the Golan and Samaria. Perhaps this is what the powers of the world don't want people to see: that the promises of the Creator are real; that His covenant is real and everlasting. Notwithstanding the marvel of this "green line" the people are the most beautiful and instructive feature of the Israel no one sees: gracious, cheerful, "grounded" we would say, living attuned to nature and to nature's Creator with simple unshakeable faith, honor for history and Scripture, and with inspiring persistence. We began our travels in the hills of Ephraim, in the University town of Ariel at the southern edge of the Shomron. A lovely hotel, the Eshel haShomron has a flower-surrounded pool, dry clear air and sits near the tip of a salient enclosed by the "security fence" at the very eastern edge of what the world leaders intend to permit for Jewish settlement. Ascending into the hills one is astonished at the spaciousness and emptiness of nearly all the Jewish heartland. Fifty-six years after Israeli independence, most of the land is still waiting for its people. There is room for millions, for innumerable flocks and plantings, for a paradise on earth. Exploring a new neighborhood of trailers (the Israelis euphemistically call them "caravans") housing refugees from the Gush Katif expulsion, I was invited for coffee by Ziv and Adi, a young couple with seven children, formerly from Netzarim. Having been uprooted several times before their temporary place at Ariel, their courtesy and good nature were remarkable. "We want to make a permanent community, to build with teaching and spirit and love. The most terrible pain was not to us but to Israel. We worry about what will come from this kind of break in caring [about people]." Nine people were living in a space barely suitable for four. Once employed now jobless, yet their hospitality and good nature shone out. They accompanied me on my way... From Ariel we drove east to Kfar Tapuach ("Apple village") and then, turning north on highway 60 sped through the chop shops and stalls of the Arab town of Hawara, noting the Jewish hilltop communities of Lehava and Hill 725 (meters) far above us on the west side of the road. Traveling this stretch, and many others like it, one grasps the need for those Israeli checkpoints the diplomats are always pressing Israel to close. It would be like pulling in your scouts and pickets at a battlefront for thanks to Camp David, Oslo and the Road Map, Jews live under siege in their own nation. A detailed map of Oslo's partitioning of central Israel shows the mischief of that "peace accord," Balkanizing the land into a myriad of terrorist enclaves, with narrow corridors for Jews to inhabit and pass through, -- at their own risk. A long-suffering and gritty patience enables the Jews to persist and flourish but this self-restraint also postpones the inevitable reckoning with an enemy that will not be appeased. Still, the planting and re-settlement of the land continues. Vivid Moments In the highlands, we ranged from Yizhar and Shalhavet in the west to Itamar, Gidonim, Givat Olam ("eternal hills," see Jacob's blessing to his sons, Genesis 49:26), and the outpost hills 830 and 777. Around the vineyards and orchards the earth was covered with thyme, purple phlox, rosemary, and pale green grasses. In the breeze, with the vista of rugged hills angling together in innumerable lines, the fragrance, stillness and beauty were startling. Gazelles paused and then bounded across the far edges of the fields. High in Itamar, despite its Alpine views and sweet people, the reality of being at the frontline of global jihad and great power games was brought home by Mike who trains dogs for community self-defense. "A dog shifts the element of surprise from the terrorist to the community patrol" he explained, then added words Americans should take to heart: "we're in an impossible situation. You can't win a war by defense." On a nearby hilltop we saw a young man in an orange tee shirt building with his bare hands a stone house that he and his fiancé would dwell in after their marriage. Looking up from yellow wild flowers one sees, miles to the southeast amazing clumps of red, plum-colored, chalky limestone and basalt crags overlooking the Jordan Valley. In Yizhar we talked with Ariel who's adding two thousand more vines to his existing 4000, grafting chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon shoots onto the hardy stock that flourish in the local soils. His wife, tall, with a long black skirt, checked shirt and two small children frisking around her smiled and invited us into their "wine cellar" featuring dozens of barrels of the local best. There was an easy going and serene friendliness that recalled the promise if not the reality of the late 1960s. Here in the Jewish towns, vineyards, farms and orchards of Samaria are the true beautiful people so much sought since those times: balanced, simple, quietly glad. They know who they are; they know what they are doing and that it's right. They live free, simply and with faith. They have a lot to offer the world though they would never say so and probably don't think about it... In Bracha, 890 meters above sea level (more than 4000 feet above the Jordan Valley) I spoke with Eretz, a cheerful young vintner who studied his craft in the coastal city of Netanya. Admiring his skill and energy I asked, "Why don't you move to France or California where you could live easily and make lots of money? Why work with the threat of terror attacks, expulsion and loss of your livelihood"? "I stay here because of the holiness of the land. I don't need to go to Italy or America to make a lot of money." Asked again about the uncertainties he just smiled and said, "We will stay." Bracha also overlooks the city of Shechem (mainstream media bury its real name an history by using the Arab "Nablus," a corruption of the Greco-Roman town, "Neapolis" built over the ruins of the original Hebrew settlement where Joseph and Joshua are buried). Since the Oslo deal, Jews have not been able to live, visit, or even pray there. On one of the peaks of Bracha, in and around a 15' x 20' concrete shelter covered loosely with camouflage is a squad of paratroops, one of several that keep the city, a major center of terrorist activity under constant surveillance. The destroyed tomb of Joseph, and the ruins of the yeshiva that was there are among many testaments to the fate of holy places when Islam takes authority. North of Shechem is Mt. Ebal, where the Israelites built the first altar when they entered the land (Joshua 8; 24). I had a constant view of the site when I stayed in Elon Moreh (see Genesis 12:7) for the holy day of Shavuot ("Pentecost"). The altar has been excavated, identified and dated by archaeologist Adam Zartal of Haifa University since 1980. His book, The Birth of a Nation discussing the finds is in Hebrew but a web site in English (http://ebal.haifa.ac.il/) gives abundant and intriguing details. One of the great ironies of our time is that as evidence of the historicity of the Hebrew Scriptures accumulates the nations increase their efforts to blot out the history and Jewish identity of Israel. It recalls those lines from Orwell's 1984: "The past was erased. The erasure was forgotten. The lie became truth." One of the main tools by which the powers pursue this dirty job is through ISM (the International solidarity Movement) and other Euro-funded leftists who infest the hills and incite local Arabs to harass, rob, and physically attack Jews, their farms and flocks. Every Jewish settlement we visited, from Elon Moreh and Scali's farm to Esh Kodesh and Hebron had stories to tell of invasions and incitement by leftists, -- and of the close ties of the provocateurs with the anti-Jewish Israeli judicial system. The apparent alignment of hostile aliens and the judicial establishment is not unique to America but part of the fissionable aspects of our times. Esh Kodesh a community of about 20 Jews on a verdant hilltop overlooking green valleys and ridges about three miles east of Shiloh (where the tabernacle was set up in the days of the Judges) is a supremely beautiful place of work and dedication. The Jews living there in trailers with a one-room post and beam synagogue are holding the land by shepherding. They, too, are targeted by "Peace Now" and the ISM. If one wants to see the frontline of the war against religion and the past, go to Israel. Joy, Community, Diversity During the past three decades, Americans have been beaten to death with the rhetoric of diversity. Here it's a code word but in Israel it's a reality. You can't find a nation of more remarkably vivid individuals nor of more varied background, features, and upbringing. On Jerusalem Day (this year May 25), the anniversary of the liberation and re-unification of Jerusalem in June 1967 there was a spectacular demonstration of the achieved fact of diversity and the motto, 'e pluribus unum.' Dancing 40 abreast down Jaffo street past Zion Square south to the Temple Mount plaza, dancing to the driving rhythms of a reggae - klezmer fusion group, came tens of thousands of Israeli-flag waving Jews of every color, size, age and language. The sense of national identity, the history and the Book that linked the celebrants has the same tap root that draws energy into the building, planting, and re-settlement of the country as a whole. The Jewish people lives and will outlive the designs of the powers and their treacherous client regimes too. Am Yisrael Chai. Eugene Narrett has published extensively on American culture and politics and on events pertaining to Israel. His books include "Gathered against Jerusalem" (Writers Club Press), "Israel Awakened" (Author House) and, forthcoming July 04, "Israel and the Endtimes" (www.authorhouse.com). Contact him at Culturtalk@aol.com |
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OLMERT IGNORES ILLEGAL ARAB CONSTRUCTION BUT BULLDOZES JEWISH HOMES
WITHOUT PERMITS
Posted by Aryeh King, June 17, 2006. |
| This article was written by Aaron Klein and appeared in World Net Daily (www.WorldNetDail.com) March 3, 2006. |
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JERUSALEM -- While Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has the past few weeks directed large numbers of Israeli forces to demolish several isolated West Bank Jewish homes deemed illegal, a report newly released here charges Jerusalem's city hall deleted files documenting hundreds of illegal Arab building projects throughout eastern sections of Jerusalem. Aryeh King, chairman of the Jerusalem Forum, which promotes Jewish construction in Jerusalem, initiated a state investigation into the deletions, which allegedly took place while Olmert served as mayor of the city. He charged Olmert told senior municipal workers not to enforce a ban on illegal Arab buildings, allegedly saying to them eastern Jerusalem would one day be given to the Palestinians. "Ehud Olmert gave the order not to deal with the problem and not to put Israeli security forces to the duty of taking down the illegal Arab complexes. Senior municipal workers told me Olmert said not to bother with the illegal Arab homes because eventually eastern Jerusalem would be given to the Palestinian Authority," said King. The state comptroller was asked to investigate the situation following the publication of a local media report alleging Jerusalem municipal officials erased the files, which detail over 300 cases of Arab construction in eastern Jerusalem deemed illegal starting from 1999. The illegal buildings were reportedly constructed without permits and are still standing. According to law, they must be demolished. The media report alleged the files were erased by Ofir May, the head of Jerusalem's Department of Building Permits, with the specific intention of allowing the statute of limitation on enforcing the demolitions of the illegal construction to run out. King's group asked the comptroller to probe Olmert's and other government officials' involvement in the alleged file deletions. Olmert was Jerusalem mayor from 1993 to 2003. The Jerusalem municipality released a statement in response to the allegations claiming the threat of Arab violence kept it from bulldozing the illegal Arab homes. "During the years of the intifada, the municipality had difficulty carrying out the necessary level of enforcement in the neighborhoods of eastern Jerusalem due to security constraints," the statement read. King said the hundreds of buildings allegedly detailed in the deleted municipal files house more than 20,000 illegal units. "We're talking about perhaps 100,000 or more Arabs in eastern Jerusalem living in illegal homes with the government doing nothing about it," King said. While the Jerusalem municipality under Olmert's mayoral administration did not clamp down on illegal Arab construction, the acting prime minister the past few weeks has directed security forces to bulldoze Jewish homes in the West Bank also deemed illegal for lack of building permits. Several weeks ago, Olmert ordered more than 1,500 Israeli Defense Force soldiers and Israeli police officers to bulldoze nine homes in the West Bank community of Amona after the court system ruled the houses were constructed without a permit. The government said the homes could be rebuilt at a later date in the same community if the construction is coordinated with the Ministry of Defense. But Olmert ordered the demolitions be carried out immediately and instructed the military to use "all force necessary." During the bulldozings, horse-mounted police, water cannons and specially trained riot officers faced off against hundreds of protesters who massed in Amona in hopes of halting the efforts. Israeli television broadcast live footage of demonstrators, including women and children, being dragged and beaten by soldiers. Teenagers with bloody noses and head wounds were seen being removed from the scene. Police were videotaped using batons and gas canisters to clear the area of demonstrators. Some protesters were seen throwing rocks and paint at security forces. After more than 100,000 Israelis gathered in Jerusalem to protest against the violence at Amona, the government established a special Knesset commission to investigate whether excessive force was used in enforcing the Amona evictions. Olmert the past few weeks also directed Israeli forces to tear down Chazon David, a small community consisting of a synagogue and several mobile units near the West Bank town of Hebron, home to the oldest Jewish community in the world. Prior to that, Olmert enforced the eviction of 11 families from a Jewish-owned market within Hebron's Jewish community because the families reportedly moved in without government permission. Some Israeli commentators have been questioning the timing of the orders to demolish the Jewish West Bank homes, which came as Olmert begins to launch Kadima's political campaign. The commentators say Olmert will need to demonstrate he is capable of carrying out the policies of Kadima in absence of its founder, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who remains comatose in a Jerusalem hospital following a severe stroke. Many Kadima members have stated the new party is looking to change Israel's borders. Olmert has announced his administration will seek to withdrawal from most of the West Bank, and has previously made statements to reporters about the possibility of vacating certain peripheral areas of Jerusalem. Israeli Nationalist lawmaker Benny Elon accused Olmert of using the recent West Bank Jewish evictions for votes: "Olmert is not a military man. He doesn't have a strong defense background like [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon, who everyone knows can get tough," Elon said. "So Olmert's public relations people told him he needs to act macho against the settlers ahead of the elections to prove to them he can push through what the extreme leftists want, a West Bank evacuation." Contact Aryeh King at kingshir@bezeqint.net |
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ISRAEL MUST LOOK TO THE EAST AS WELL AS THE WEST
Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, June 17, 2006. |
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Israel's foreign policy initiatives must align with the West, especially America, when advantageous, yet prescient logic dictates connections should be directed towards the rising sun as well, wending their way to Shanghai, an erstwhile refuge for thousands of Jews fleeing sadistic Nazi barbarians and other abusive enclaves. A once thriving community of perhaps 30,000 disproportionately productive souls of Jewish heritage can and should be revived. The Chinese government understands that Jews do not proselytize, thus are no threat to its power structure. Furthermore, those who lead the rapidly strengthening Oriental Dragon realize that tiny Israel, identified by its Jewish character, is a flourishing economic dynamo immersed in state of the art technological research and development, with a cerebral populace that can surely benefit any trading partner. Shanghai, in particular, can no doubt use an educated motivated Jewish professional workforce, that evolving city having recently constructed enormous amounts of office space, even rivaling in volume existing business laboratories saturating the entire island of Manhattan. Thus Israeli entrepreneurs, or perhaps the Israeli government, would be wise to invest in an industrial research complex, within China's largest megalopolis, providing opportunities for Jewish/Israeli brainpower to immigrate and steer potential projects. Of course, Jewish/Israeli families prefer to inhabit communities with comfortable affordable housing and familiar cultural accoutrements like Jewish style/kosher restaurants, theaters, health clubs, and so forth. Such collateral enterprises can indeed be erected to support the hub of any progressive Jewish/Israeli managed complex in the heart of Shanghai. Diversity would likely be welcomed in fact encouraged in this exponentially expanding international bastion of economic activity. Let us not ignore the relevant fact that China is a major trading partner of Iran, a regime whose maniacal Islamic president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad suggests Israel be wiped off the map. Sometimes it is good to ally with a nation that interacts with your worst enemy. Perhaps, the inflammatory rhetoric of the Persian potentate would soften if the emerging Oriental superpower puts in a good word or two about the Jewish State. Stranger things have happened. All nations attempt to enhance their own interests, and if it is in the interest of Iran to reassess its attitude towards Israel, it will likely do so. No philosophy is etched in stone when more beneficial considerations are in order. Even Jew-despising lunatics like Ahmadinejad, or perhaps those who might still overrule the Imam obsessed jihad junkie, would not wish to upset this no nonsense Pacific Rim customer with ever-growing clout. As century twenty-one begins to emerge, a country infected with thus influenced by the scourge of hate-filled Islamic fundamentalism, even an oil-producing country, will not successfully compete within a global economy if it consequently loses its most important contracts. If Israel, understanding the ways of Darwinian hardball, becomes an essential component within the schematic of the Oriental powerhouse's global outreach, the symbiotic trade and brainpower alliance will strengthen the currently beleaguered Jewish State's hand in a planetary casino where a few superpowers truly own the house thus can order the likes of Islamic "tar-pit" bosses with all their prehistoric carbon-based eggs in one straw basket to toe a rational line. Furthermore, as century twenty-one continues to emerge, as alternative energy sources finally flourish, regimes such as currently dysfunctional erstwhile Persia, for one, will either cut the umbilical cord to an imaginary misogynist Allahland paradise steeped in compliant virgins and get with a tangible sensible secular progressive tolerant program of modernization, or wither away into chaotic third world impoverished obscurity. A raw material economy, even if sucking-up petrodollars and petroeuros now, is not sustainable in the long run. Today's presumed oil-drenched royal flush in spades, held by maniacal mullahs and other Islamic potentates, in reality continues to dig their sterile exploitative dictatorships into abyss' of no return, for someday the fossil fuel foundation of their collective wealth will morph into a hand of worthless jihad jokers. In the meantime, let Israel advance using inherent brainpower while networking its worth to friends, both East and West, in high places. As one philosopher of note once opined, "For the loser now will be later to win for the times they are a-changin'." Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at luniglicht@snip.net |
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OLMERT IS GIVING UP ALL OF JERUSALEM
Posted by Sanda Abromovici-Lam, June 17, 2006. |
| This article was written by Caroline Glick and it appeared in the Jerusalem Post June 15, 2006. |
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During his tour this week of European capitals, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced that in addition to Judea and Samaria, he plans to transfer a number of neighborhoods in Jerusalem to Hamas. In his words, "Not all the Arab neighborhoods will be part of the city in the future." Olmert claims that taking these Arab neighborhoods out of Jerusalem's municipal boundaries will strengthen the city. From a security perspective this makes no sense since transferring Tzur Baher, Jebl Mukaber and Isawiya to the Hamas-Fatah-Islamic Jihad-al-Qaida-Hizbullah-led Palestinian Authority will place all the remaining neighborhoods in the city within enemy rocket, mortar and even rifle range. Olmert apparently thinks that partitioning the city will secure the Jewish majority of the city. Yet, taking these neighborhoods out of the city will actually endanger that majority. Over the past few months, a team of American and Israeli researchers conducted a demographic study of Jerusalem and its environs. Last year the same researchers - Bennett Zimmerman, Roberta Seid, Michael Weiss and Yoram Ettinger - conducted the first independent study of the Palestinian population data published by the PA's Central Bureau of Statistics in 1997. Their study exposed that the PA had inflated the number of Palestinians in Judea, Samaria and Gaza by some 1.5 million or 50 percent. Olmert and his colleagues in Kadima and the Labor Party have justified their plan to surrender Judea and Samaria to Hamas on the basis of these inflated numbers which falsely project that by 2015 there will be more Arabs than Jews between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The team's research methods and their findings were reviewed by the leading American demographer Nicholas Eberstadt from the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC. At the Herzliya Conference in January, Eberstadt praised the team's research methods and stated that their conclusions were "not only plausible but quite persuasive." Their study showed that today Jews comprise 59 percent of the overall population of the areas that include sovereign Israel, Judea and Samaria and Gaza and 67 percent of the population of Judea, Samaria and sovereign Israel. Far from becoming the minority by 2015, the group's projections show that in 2025, Jews will comprise between 56-71 percent of the overall population of Judea, Samaria and sovereign Israel. In other words, the team showed that there is no demographic threat to Israel's Jewish majority. The team began examining the demographic situation in Jerusalem and its environs after Olmert first expressed his plan to partition the city as part of his unilateral retreat policy. The team noted at the outset that Olmert's claim - that by placing Arab neighborhoods outside the municipal boundaries he would be reducing the Arab population of the capital by tens of thousands - ignores the fact that Arabs can move. As legal residents of Jerusalem these Arabs are under no obligation to remain in the neighborhoods slotted for transfer to Hamas. Indeed, since the government's intention to partition the city was made clear by the route of the security fence, thousands of Arabs with Jerusalem ID cards who had previously lived in Judea and in neighborhoods set to be placed outside the city's boundaries started converging on the city. Residents of Pisgat Ze'ev and Neveh Ya'acov relate that Arabs are moving into their neighborhoods in droves. This is also the case in the city's Arab neighborhoods not set for transfer to Hamas such as Beit Tzafafa, Wadi Joz and Abu Tor. Rather than reduce the number of Arabs in the city, Olmert's plan is just crowding the city's population into shrunken boundaries. At the same time, by giving up all the reserve open lands around the city, he is blocking all chance of municipal growth. As Zimmerman and his team members note, in Jerusalem's current municipal boundaries, 487,000 Jews make up 68% of the population and 231,000 Arabs make up 32%. Fertility rates of the two populations are nearly identical, with a Jewish fertility rate of 3.8 and an Arab fertility rate of 4.1 per woman. The team checked what would happen if, rather than partitioning the city, Israel were to expand the boundaries of the city. They found that if Israel were to extend the borders of the capital to include the Adumim bloc, the Etzion bloc, the Adam bloc, the Givon bloc, Mevasseret Zion and its satellite neighborhoods, the Tekoa area, Abu Dis and Bir Naballah and incorporate all these communities' Jewish and Arab residents into the city, Jerusalem's demographic balance would remain the same. The enlarged city would have 704,000 or 68% Jewish residents and 335,000 or 32% Arab residents. The enlarged capital would have plenty of land reserves on which to build new housing for both its Jewish and Arab residents. Retaining Israeli control over the areas around Jerusalem's current boundaries would also protect Bethlehem's status as a Christian city while Olmert's plan, which places these areas under terrorist control, guarantees that Jesus's birth city will become a Muslim majority city with all the religious and political consequences that such a religious transformation would involve for the Christian world. The study shows that the number of Arabs that would be incorporated into the city if it were to expand its borders is smaller than the number of Arabs incorporated into the city with its unification in 1967. And it goes without saying that an enlarged Jerusalem would be safer than a partitioned city with its removed sections under terrorist control. In light of the study's findings, and given the deterioration of Israel's national security situation in the wake of its retreat from Gaza last summer and the recent reports of al-Qaida cells operating in Jerusalem, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that in configuring his retreat and partition plan for the country's capital city, Olmert did not consider its devastating repercussions on Jerusalem itself. SO IF Olmert's planned retreat harms Jerusalem, what purpose does it serve? The sole goal that Olmert's partition plan advances is that of attempting to appease racist, anti-Jewish radical Islamic forces that claim that Jews have no rights in Jerusalem. Indeed, at its core, Olmert's plan internalizes this jihadist view by completely ignoring the security, municipal and demographic concerns of the city's Jews and non-jihadist Arabs. This Israeli internalization of the jihadist view of Jews in Jerusalem also pervades the government's treatment of Jewish land purchases in eastern Jerusalem. Last week Ha'aretz reported that a month ago the State's Attorney, Eran Shendar, asked Police Inspector Yohanan Danino to undertake a covert investigation of Ateret Cohanim - a non-profit organization that works to bypass the Palestinian Authority's policy of defining land sales to Jews as a capital offense for which dozens of Arabs have been murdered since 1994. Shendar's instructions came after an Arab Jerusalemite named Muhammad Marageh, who in the past worked for Ateret Cohanim, offered to attempt to criminally implicate the organization in exchange for receiving state's witness protection and, perhaps, money from the state. The Ha'aretz report makes clear that Israel's chief prosecutor is so convinced that there is something wrong with willing Arab sellers selling land to willing Jewish buyers that apparently, without being presented with any evidence of wrongdoing, he ordered the police to begin a secret criminal investigation of the Jews. This anti-Jewish view is similarly manifested in the police's indifference to the fates of Arab land sellers. On April 12, the eve of Pessah, Jerusalem resident Muhammad Abu Al Hawa was tortured and murdered in Jericho for the "crime" of selling a building in Abu Tor to Jews. The week before his murder Israel's Channel 10 led prime time news broadcasts, on two consecutive nights, with hysterical reports about the land sale. The reports were precipitated by a court order for the police to evict illegal squatters from the building to enable the legal owners to take possession of their property - an eviction which Channel 10 filmed. As I reported at the time, sources in Abu Tor stated that after the Channel 10 expose, it was only a question of time before Hawa was murdered. Those sources also said that far from protecting Hawa, the police were suspected of tipping off Channel 10's reporter on the scheduled eviction. This week, the spokesman for the police's Samaria and Judea District responsible for investigating Hawa's murder did not respond to repeated requests for information on the status of the investigation. THE GOVERNMENT'S treatment of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate similarly exposes its internalization of the anti-Semitic view that Jews have no rights in eastern Jerusalem. Today there are two Patriarchs of the Greek Orthodox Church: the legal Patriarch Irineos and the illegal de facto Patriarch Theophilos. Last summer Ma'ariv reported that Irineos leased two hotels near the Old City's Jaffa Gate to Jews. The story caused an uproar in the Church, the PA and among Israeli Arabs. In its wake, Irineos was illegally ejected from his position and his life has been under constant threat. The Church, together with Jordan's King Abdullah and PA President Mahmoud Abbas, selected Theophilos to replace him. Ahead of his appointment, Theophilos promised Abdullah that he would operate in accordance with Jordanian rather than Israeli law, meaning that he would uphold the Jordanian legal prohibition of conducting land deals with Jews. Attorneys and others involved in this issue claim that Theophilis also pledged to Abbas that he would cancel the lease agreement for the hotels at the Jaffa Gate. In an interview with Al Quds newspaper on May 18, Theophilos said that he was unable today to fulfill his pledges because the Israeli government has yet to approve his appointment. To force Israel's hand, Theophilos filed a petition with the Supreme Court demanding that the government approve his appointment. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the petition on July 19. The Jews involved in the Jaffa Gate lease agreement and in other land agreements with the Greek Orthodox Church, which owns vast landholdings in Jerusalem and throughout the country, are deeply concerned about the government's likely response to the petition. The government did nothing when Irineos was sacked although it is legally bound to protect him and his position. Indeed, Israel has allowed Theophilos to act as the de facto Patriarch. The government's acceptance of the jihadist view that denies all Jewish rights to Jerusalem is nowhere more evident than on the Temple Mount, which since 1995 Israel has abandoned to the control of the PA's Mufti Ikrameh Sabri. Sabri preaches the "rights" of Arabs to eradicate the Jews whom he refers to as "pigs and monkeys." And with the backing of the Israeli government, he ensures that the police enforces his ban on Jewish and Christian worship on the Temple Mount. Moreover, under the impotent eye of the government, for the past decade Sabri has overseen the commission of one of the most heinous archaeological crimes in human history. While denying the Judeo-Christian sanctity of the site, since the mid-1990s the Islamic Wakf on the Temple Mount has been systematically destroying Jewish and Christian relics hidden inside the mountain that date back to the time of Solomon's Temple, in an attempt to erase the historical record. Sabri and his colleagues further exploit their control of the Temple Mount to incite Muslims to attack Jews for imagined crimes relating to the so-called "Judaization" of Jerusalem. In answer to reporters' queries, this week Olmert repeatedly stated that he would never give up the Temple Mount. But his statements are meaningless. You cannot give up what you already surrendered. No, Olmert is not giving up the Temple Mount. Olmert is giving up all of Jerusalem. Contact Sanda Abromovici-Lam by email at sab@telefonica.net.pe |
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PATHWAYS TO JIHAD TERRORISM
Posted by Dr. Babu Suseelan, June 17, 2006. |
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Jihadi terrorism is as old as Islam. Jihad war, death and destruction have followed in the wake of Islam for hundreds of years. Ancient Egypt, Greece, Spain, Persia, India and several societies have experienced the deadly Islamic conquest. Now Jihadi terrorism has propelled to dangerous proportions and is a major threat to public health and world peace. Jihadi terrorists are said to have the unique ability to perpetuate their deadly terrorism wreaking havoc in every city in the world. It's destructive impact on the economy, public health and public safety is widespread, and on the increase. Sensational Jihadi terrorism, mass riots, violence, beheading, suicide bombing and plane hijacking are under constant media scrutiny. Jihadi terrorism is also a compelling subject for terrorism scholars, social scientists and security planners. Nevertheless, agreement on the important underlying causes has been elusive and inconsistent. Liberal left wing social scientists attribute Jihadi terrorism as a product of "labeling" and social causes including economic deprivation and interference of non-Islamic countries. They romanticize Jihadi terrorists as involved in protest against social injustice. In their eagerness to promote the irrational doctrine of "political correctness", left wing armchair speculators see Jihadi terrorists as victims of reactionary, reductionist "conspiracy theories" that make the terrorists the real victim of unjust society. For phony, left wing, liberal social scientists, suicide bombing, mass murder, riots, arson and public beheading of non-Muslims by Jihadi terrorists are negotiated product of formal responses to political injustices. Numerous empirical evidence and case study analysis of Muslim terrorists proves the unbalance of this equation. Such malicious "politically correct" statement is misleading and mischievous. The unified left wing explanation of Jihadi terrorism as a social phenomenon in the changing political, economic context is false and falls far short of explaining reliable and stable psychological and religious variables influencing Islamic terrorism. In recent years, studies of risk prediction and identification of both static and dynamic factors associated with Jihadi terrorism have provided a clear understanding of the problem. Empirically based investigations of psychological factors on Jihadi terrorists have indicated important cognitive and behavioral variables acting as pathways for Jihadi terrorism. Focused studies have revealed unusual ways of Jihadi's thinking, asocial attitudes, cruelty, and indifference to the feelings of victims, paranoia and aggressive hostility. ISLAMIC THINKING ERRORS Religious, psychological, educational, and historical factors are implicated in Jihadi terrorism. Static variables (age, ethnic religious background) and dynamic variables (cognitive distortions, thinking errors, negative emotions, maladaptive behaviors, deviance amplifying community networks) also specifically lend itself to the identification of dynamic risk factors of Jihadi terrorism. Muslims think Islam is a perfect and perfected religion. It has perfect answers for science, politics, government, economics, psychosocial problems and human life. As far as the doctrinal tenets are concerned, Islam maintains that Muslims must unquestionably follow the tenets. Muslims should shun everything that is opposed to Islam. Muslims consider Koran, Hadith and sura, which are called "Nusoos-e-Qatiyah", are perfect and have no place for criticism. Muslims are indoctrinated at an early age into the rigid, closed, reductionaist Islamic dogma, demanding full faith and devotion and separation from all competing philosophies. They are kept ignorant of the world and other rational thought systems. Islamic schools focus on rote memorization of Koran and discourage critical thinking. Islam regards thinking as a part of worship. Questioning Islamic concepts is the biggest crime, punishable by death. From the beginning, Islamic education starts formulating a conceptualization, which logically connects automatic Islamic thoughts and beliefs. The education system fails to see the larger picture and jump from one core belief to another. It provides a cognitive map that is limited, hostile and untrue. The faulty cognitive map generally resonates with the students for life. These rigid Islamic cognitive schemas have a profound impact on their thinking, feeling and behavior. Muslims have a common narrative history, cognitive schemas, social scripts, and kind of desire, attitude and cultural values. The whole thought system lacks critical thinking, rational analysis and personal responsibility, and Muslims are just content to stay the same and blame every one but themselves for their thinking errors. For their failings and shortcomings, Muslims hide behind alibi and denial. Everything happens is "Allah's Will" and "non-believers will burn in Islamic hell fire". Such automatic expressions influence their subsequent emotion, behavior and response. Since their automatic response is based on their pre-conceived Islamic thought, they often misconstrue neutral situations to fit their closed model thinking. Thus, Muslim's automatic thoughts are with full of thinking errors and biased. Since Islam is a closed dogma and Muslims are forbidden to test its validity or utility, and required to maintain the equilibrium at any cost, Muslim's thinking errors are overwhelming. Dysfunctional automatic thoughts coexist with various thinking errors in Islam. Typical Islamic thinking errors include: * Polarized or all-or-nothing-thinking (e.g.: believers and non-believers, daru-ul-Islam, dar-ul-harb) Muslims erroneously think Islamic absolutist paradigm is designed to be adaptable to existing, new and future applications for all the time. It restricts Muslims to seek viable solutions to life's problems. They refuse to reform or incorporate critical elements with Islamic thinking as a means to achieve a better society by utilizing new concepts to reach a more accurate assessment to produce more accurate judgments. Out of box thinking, logical reasoning, higher order thinking, and scientific thinking are really not intellectual pursuits of Muslims. DISTURBED JIHADI MIND As a result, their interpretation of neutral events, problem solving strategies, emotional reactions, interpersonal communication and attitude towards non-Muslims are full of thinking errors, automatic thoughts and negative behaviors. Consciously or unconsciously, Jihadi Muslims react to upsetting events, rejection, failure, and criticism in extreme negative Islamic terms. They may spontaneously respond without critical evaluation with extreme, angry outbursts. Instead of developing a more adaptive response, Jihadi Muslims accept automatic, pre cooked responses couched in Islamic jargon as correct and feel proud of it. Islamic automatic thoughts are predictable since its underlying beliefs are in the closed, rigid Islamic dogma. Such automatic response and ready-made solutions from Koranic concepts complicate issues, and interfere with their ability to reach positive goals. These dysfunctional, automatic thoughts and negative mal adaptive behaviors are logically connected to the content of the defective automatic thoughts. It leads to intermittent explosive disorder including violence, riots, suicide bombing and terrorism. For Jihadi Muslims, such distorted thoughts and violent behavior has their own validity and utility. The consequences are decidedly disastrous and miserable for the victims. The interaction of Islamic dogmatism, early indoctrination, rote memorization, deviant amplifying community psychodynamics, and cognitive processes enable Muslims to the maintenance of closed thinking, negative emotions and explosive behaviors. Strict Islamic regulatory guidelines also act as catalysts for developing authoritarian/conservative personality traits including conservatism, aggression, toughness, projectivity, stereotyping, destruction, hostility and anger. Such aggressive, conservative personality traits are maintained in all Jihadi Muslims by militant Islamic religious and social networks. Research studies have revealed that individuals who are committed to dogmatic Islamic belief system suffer from reasoning deficiencies, thinking errors and are likely to join terrorists groups as an expression of their conservative/authoritarian outlook. There is also evidence that socioeconomic factors, and educational level are not a determinant of Jihadi terrorism. Do Jihadi Muslims who share dogmatic Islamic beliefs, and membership in terrorism groups are more emotionally disturbed? By every measure available to researchers, absolutist, dogmatic, rigid beliefs negatively influence ethical judgment, and precipitate emotional disturbances. DEVIANCE AMPLIFYING ISLAMIC NETWORKS In Islamic culture, the common emotional impulses of Muslims are shaped through Islamic education, and through shared experiences in the Islamic social groups. Islamic cultural institutions, religious organizations and the state have ways of controlling thinking and social expression. The dogmatic Islamic ideology, and the strict enforcement of religious practices to maintain the closed system, and rote memorization of Koran solidify dysfunctional cognitive schemas. Defective cognitive schemas, culture and conservative personality continuously interact, in mutually supporting and shaping explosive behaviors. Jihadi Muslims seldom recognize the existence or inappropriateness of their thinking errors, negative emotions or refrain from misinterpretation of the situation or violent outbursts. In discussion or negotiation sessions, Jihadis often mix-up feelings and thoughts and mislabel feelings as thoughts. The connection among their irrational thoughts, negative emotion and outrageous behavior is always justified in the name of Allah. PREVENTING JIHADI VIOLENCE To develop and implement an effective model to prevent Jihadi violence and terrorism, it is important to focus on the cognitive and behavioral variables acting as pathways for Jihadi terrorism. Empirically based investigations of psychological factors of Jihadi terrorism have been helpful in identifying risk factors, thinking errors, and criminogenic needs of Jihadi terrorists. These risk factors, and the deadly Islamic ideology, which transforms Muslims into terrorists and suicide bombers should be part of any effective harm reduction and terrorism prevention policy and plan. Prevention strategies must include effective cognitive restructuring methods to address the impact of early learning processes and its influence in shaping negative emotions and deviant behaviors. Democratic nations must exert pressure on Islamic countries to reform their education system. Education in Islamic countries is not conducive for raising the level of rational thinking, or to help students in thinking differently, and expand scientific knowledge and insight. It is necessary to compel Islamic educational institutions to modify the system to minimize those factors, which enhance destructive beliefs and thinking errors. Effective educational reform must include restructuring school curriculum, and revising training curriculum for teachers. Islamic education reform can modify negative thinking process and possibly ameliorate some of the violent behavior including Jihadi terrorism. Revision of Islamic education should come from outside of Jihadi groups. Islamic countries must be forced to break the wall of denial and commit themselves to the difficult process of change. As part of the pressure, liberal democratic nations must enforce effective psycholinguistic, cognitive/behavior restructuring, and thinking for a change programs to modify Muslim's sense of righteousness and their simplistic all or nothing mentality that causes them to wage war against infidels. Dr. Babu Suseelan is a professor of psychology and director of a drug and alcohol treatment program in Pennsylvania. He writes on the effect of Islamic terrorists on Hindu society. |
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WHEN GENERALS BEHAVE LIKE MOTHERS
Posted by Gary Cooperberg, June 16, 2006. |
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We sing "Hatifkvah", but it seems that we have lost the hope. We have still not escaped the ghetto mentality which tells us that our highest priority is to please the goyim. What will the nations think if we act as a proud independent nation and vanquish our enemies? Our leaders are afraid that foreign sympathy for vanquished Arabs will turn the nations against us, so rather than destroy those who seek to destroy us, we make it national policy to live together with our murderers. There are those who angrily condemn those Jews who still do have Jewish pride and self respect. Nadia Matar is being prosecuted for being a living example of Jewish self respect, an act which a self hating Jewish government cannot tolerate. What they fail to understand is that Jewish mothers have been forced to behave like army generals only because our army generals have begun to act like Jewish mothers. Yesterday two young Jewish girls were almost kidnaped while trying to hitch a ride in our country. General Yair Golan, in reaction to the incident called upon Jews not to hitch rides in Judea and Samaria. We don't need IDF generals to act like mothers. Rather than suggest that we stop living normal lives, the general would do better to make kidnaping an impossibility by taking freedom of travel away from our Arab enemies. Ehud Olmert is going all over the world selling his brand of cowardice as a form of twisted ideology. Rather than admit that we are living in a state of war and simply decide to win it, he has chosen to flee from our enemies and surrender our freedom and independence in the futile hope that the nations of the world will respect us for it. What cowards always fail to understand is that fleeing from bullies never satisfies them. On the contrary, it only encourages them to increase their belligerence. Anyone can see that our brave and bold decision to flee from Gaza has resulted in increased terror which will not stop until our leaders decide to stop it by returning to those areas and destroying our enemies. Olmert claims that his plans for further retreat are inevitable. This may be true. But what he refuses to see is the fact that such plans will result in strengthening our enemies who will eventually unite in a renewed effort to destroy our country completely. There is no question that any Jewish government will eventually have no choice but to redeem and reclaim all of the lands we have freely given away to our enemies. Our enemies will give us no choice. But the price we will have to pay in innocent lives will be far higher than it would have been had we acted with self respect rather than self humiliation. When Arabs are not afraid to try to kidnap Jewish girls, the question we should ask ourselves is not "Why do Jewish girls place themselves in danger"? Rather "How is it that Arabs are not afraid to kidnap Jewish girls"? We have an army which is fully capable of making it clear that kidnaping and stone throwing, not to mention shooting at us, are acts punishable by immediate death. Rather than arresting the kidnapers, they should have been shot on sight. It is only because we are tolerant of terror that terror prevails. It is high time that Jewish generals start acting like generals, and stop acting like Jewish mothers. Gary Cooperberg founded Project Shofar, which is dedicated to
sounding the alarm to Jew and Gentile
alike, to open our eyes to the G-dly process that is presently
underway, and work to support it. We dare not stand idly on the
sidelines. Contact Gary Cooperberg at gary@projectshofar.org or
go to his website:
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THE PALESTINIAN DISEASE: WHO IS TO BLAME FOR GRIEF ON A BEACH?
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 16, 2006. |
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This article was written by Charles Krauthammer and it appeared today in Jewish World Review. (jewishworldreview.com/cols/krauthammer061606.php3). |
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It was another one of those pictures that goes instantly around the world. A young Palestinian, wailing in wretched sorrow, grieving over her dead father, stepmother and five siblings who had been killed by an explosion on a Gaza beach. Then came the blame. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (he's the moderate) immediately called the killings an act of Israeli "genocide" and, to dramatize the crime, legally adopted the bereaved girl. The sensational coverage and sensational charges raise the obvious question: Why would Israel deliberately shell a peaceful family on a beach? The Israeli government, clumsy as ever, seemed to semi-apologize by expressing regret about the deaths, implying that perhaps they had been caused by an errant Israeli shell targeting a Palestinian rocket base. But then, a few days later, an army investigation concluded that it was not Israel's doing at all. First, because the shrapnel taken from the victims (treated at Israeli hospitals -- some "genocide") were not the ordnance used in Israeli artillery. Second, because aerial photography revealed no crater that could have been caused by Israeli artillery. And, third, because Israel could account for five of the six shells it launched at the rocket base nearby, and the missing one had been launched at least five minutes before the one that killed the family. An expert at a local chapter of a human rights group disputes the Israeli claims. Okay. Let's concede for the sake of argument that the question of whether it was an errant Israeli shell remains unresolved. But the obvious question not being asked is this: Who is to blame if Palestinians are setting up rocket launchers to attack Israel -- and placing them 400 yards from a beach crowded with Palestinian families on the Muslim Sabbath? Answer: This is another example of the Palestinians' classic and cowardly human-shield tactic -- attacking innocent Israeli civilians while hiding behind innocent Palestinian civilians. For Palestinian terrorists -- and the Palestinian governments (both Fatah and Hamas) that allow them to operate unmolested -- it's a win-win: If their rockets aimed into Israeli towns kill innocent Jews, no one abroad notices and it's another success in the terrorist war against Israel. And if Israel's preventive and deterrent attacks on those rocket bases inadvertently kill Palestinian civilians, the iconic "Israeli massacre" picture makes the front page of the New York Times, and the Palestinians win the propaganda war. But there is an even larger question not asked. Whether the rocket bases are near civilian beaches or in remote areas, why are the Gazans launching any rockets at Israel in the first place -- about 1,000 in the past year? To get Israel to remove its settlers, end the occupation and let the Palestinians achieve dignity and independence? But Israel did exactly that in Gaza last year. It completely evacuated Gaza, dismantled all its military installations, removed its soldiers, destroyed all Israeli settlements and expelled all 7,000 Israeli settlers. Israel then declared the line that separates Israel from Gaza to be an international frontier. Gaza became the first independent Palestinian territory ever. And what have the Palestinians done with this independence, this judenrein territory under the Palestinians' control? They have used their freedom to launch rockets at civilians in nearby Israeli towns. Why? Because the Palestinians prefer victimhood to statehood. They have demonstrated that for 60 years, beginning with their rejection of the United Nations decision to establish a Palestinian state in 1947 because it would have also created a small Jewish state next door. They declared war instead. Half a century later, at the Camp David summit with President Bill Clinton, Israel renewed the offer of a Palestinian state -- with its capital in Jerusalem, with not a single Jewish settler remaining in Palestine, and on a contiguous territory encompassing 95 percent of the West Bank (Israel making up the other 5 percent with pieces of Israel proper). The Palestinian answer? War again -- Yasser Arafat's terror war, aka the second intifada, which killed a thousand Jews. This embrace of victimhood, of martyrdom, of blood and suffering, is the Palestinian disease. They are offered an independent state. They are given all of Gaza. And they respond with rocket attacks into peaceful Israeli towns -- in pre-1967 Israel proper, mind you. What can Israel do but try to take out those rocket bases and their crews? What would the United States do if rockets were raining into San Diego from across the border with Mexico? Now look again at that terrible photograph and ask yourself: Who is responsible for the heart-rending grief of that poor Palestinian girl? David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com |
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JEWISH DEMOGRAPHIC MOMENTUM EXPOSES SEVERE ERRORS BY "DEMOGRAPHERS OF DOOM"
Posted by Yoram Ettinger, June 16, 2006. |
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Enclosed you'll find two article, published this morning (June 16, 2006) by Ha'aretz daily on its front page and as a commentary. The articles highlight some of the grave errors, which have underlined Demographic Fatalism. Contrary to the "Prophecies of Demographic Doom", there is a demographic problem, but there is NO Demographic Machete on the throat of the Jewish State, and the current trend is bolstering Jewish Demographic Momentum. More data can be downloaded from http://www.pademographic.com. Shabbat Shalom and may we heed a key lesson of this week portion of the Torah (SHLAKH): Just like Caleb and Joshua -- and contrary to the ten wimps -- a nation should not sacrifice long-term vision, history, principles and national security on the altar of short-term convenience, due to a tenuous threat, temptation or pressure. |
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1. "Fertility rate among Israeli Arab women steadily declining"
The fertility rate among Arab women in Israel has declined steadily in the past five years, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics. Fertility rate signifies the number of children a woman is expected to deliver during the course of her life. The fertility rate among Israel's Muslims was more than nine children in the 1960s. By 1985, it had dropped to 4.7 children, and then remained at this level for the next 15 years. Over the past five years, the decline resumed, with the fertility rate dropping 8 percent - from 4.74 children per Muslim woman in 2000 to 4.36 in 2004. During the same period, the fertility rate for Jewish women rose slightly, from 2.66 to 2.71. Another relevant figure is the number of births per thousand. Among the Jewish population, the number of births per thousand rose from 18.7 in 2000 to 19.2 in 2004. In contrast, the number of births per thousand among the Muslim population plummeted during the same period, from 37.5 to 33.2 - a drop of 11 percent. The number of Jewish births in Israel rose from 92,000 in 2000 to 100,000 in 2004 - an increase of 9 percent. Meanwhile, there were 36,000 Muslim births in 2000 and the same number in 2004. The very next year brought a drop of 5 percent, to 34,000 Muslim births. 2. "A blue-and-white future?"
The dispute over Israel's demographic forecast has broad political implications - mainly for the question of whether the convergence plan is necessary There is no demographic problem in Israel, there never was one, and most important, there is not going to be one - that is the clear conclusion reached by anyone who accepts the demographic forecast presented by an American-Israeli team of experts. A year and a half ago, this team, headed by former strategy consultant Bennett Zimmerman, kicked up a storm with its contention that there were 2.5 million Palestinians in the Palestinian Authority (West Bank and Gaza) in 2004, and not 3.8 million, as claimed by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, upon whose data most of the demographers rely. Now the team has published its predictions for 2025. According to the median forecast, 7.5 million Jews will be living in Israel and the West Bank then, constituting 63 percent of the population, as compared to 4.45 million Arabs (of these, 2.25 million in the West Bank), or 37 percent of the population. In other words, for every Arab, there will be two Jews. The population in Israel proper will be 77 percent Jews and 23 percent Arabs - not much different from today. These are the assumptions that guided the American-Israeli team in its highly optimistic forecast: There are only 1.4 million Palestinians in the West Bank today. The fertility rate of Jews in Israel is higher than that taken into account by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics in its forecasts, while the fertility rate of the Arabs in Israel is plunging. Immigration to Israel is expected to continue in its present scope. So what about the Gaza Strip? The one area that has been left out of the team's report, for some reason, is Gaza. True, Israel has disengaged from it, so presenting data that exclude it might be considered legitimate. But to completely ignore the Arab population living between the Mediterranean and the Jordan? That doesn't seem logical. Seeing that Zimmerman's team didn't do it, I took the figures for Gaza and factored them into the demographic forecast for 2025. The current state of affairs can be described thus: In 2004, according to the U.S.-Israeli group, the strip of land between the Jordan and the sea was 60 percent Jewish and 40 percent Arab. Hebrew University's Prof. Sergio della Pergola, one of Israel's leading demographers, says that since last year the number of Jews and Arabs in the region has equalized. According to the team's median forecast, there will be 7.5 million Jews and 6.2 million Arabs between the Mediterranean and the Jordan in 2025, which is to say, 55 percent Jews and 45 percent Arabs - almost a tie. In other words, there may indeed be a demographic problem, although Zimmerman's data show that it is developing very slowly. The president of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), Louis Shabana, claims that the number of Palestinians living in the PA will reach 5 million by 2015. Zimmerman's team predicts only 4 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza in 2025. Demography is also a matter of geography, apparently. Not just numbers Zimmerman is not the only one who has his doubts about the predictions of the Palestinian CBS (3.6 million in 2004). Della Pergola's estimate for the number of Arabs in the PA is 3.3 million, and Prof. Arnon Sofer of the University of Haifa is inclined to accept the Israel Defense Forces' figure of 3 million. Ultimately, the debate is not just about numbers, but between those who say that we are looking at a very serious and dangerous demographic problem (Della Pergola and Sofer), and those who say our demographic future looks more blue-and-white than ever (Zimmerman, his Israeli partner Yoram Ettinger and their team of experts). "If we lop off a few hundred thousand people, the demographic 'tie' only gets pushed off by a couple of years," says Della Pergola. "Does that change anything?" This dispute has broad political implications, of course, mainly for the question of whether the convergence plan is necessary at all, or could be done without. Zimmerman et al have convinced us more with the questions they have raised than with their facts and figures. Thanks to them, the Israeli public has learned that the Palestinian figures are only a forecast. The Palestinian CBS itself, with or without a connection to Zimmerman's report, has lowered its estimate for 2004 from 3.8 million to 3.6 million; 200,000 people gone with the click of the mouse. The Zimmerman team had some major criticisms of the Palestinian forecast. For example, the fertility rate has sharply declined in the territories under PA control, which means that the forecast is inflated by about 300,000 people. The Palestinian CBS also counts the 200,000 residents of East Jerusalem and 150,000 Palestinians living outside East Jerusalem who have received Israeli identity cards. Also, the Palestinians include in their figures 325,000 people who have resettled abroad (the Palestinians deny this). The calculations of their CBS are thus based on an influx of 320,000 people into PA territory. In practice, however, the immigration-emigration balance is negative. The claim by Zimmerman's team that fertility in the Arab sector in Israel has radically declined is worth noting, especially in view of the fact that it is entirely based on the data of the Palestinian CBS. The most important figure in birthrate predictions is the total fertility rate (TFR) - i.e., the number of children a woman is likely to bear in her lifetime. The TFR for a Muslim woman, which was 4.74 in 2000, has been steadily decreasing. In 2004, it was 4.36; a decline of 8 percent. The TFR for a Jewish woman rose slightly in the same period, from 2.66 to 2.71. There were 92,000 Jewish births in Israel in 2000, and 100,000 in 2004 - an increase of 9 percent. The number of births in the Muslim Arab sector was 36,000 in 2000, with no change in 2004. The rate of births per 1,000 Jewish women rose from 18.7 in 2000 to 19.2 in 2004. The rate of births per 1,000 Muslim women dropped in this period from 37.5 to 33.2 - a decline of 11 percent. One of the widespread criticisms against the Zimmerman team last
year, especially on the part of Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics,
was that the group had made a presentation rather than publishing
research. What this meant in academic terms was that its findings
could not be taken seriously or responded to in a proper fashion. A
few months ago, the team published an academic research paper under
the aegis of Bar-Ilan University's Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic
Research, downloadable from the center's Internet site. A Hebrew
translation of the paper will soon be out. Now the findings can be
discussed, challenged or rejected -- but to ignore them would be folly.
Ambassador Yoram Ettinger is a consultant on US-Israel relations as
well as the Chairman of Special Projects at the Ariel Center for
Policy Research. Formerly the Minister for Congressional Affairs to
Israel's Embassy in Washington, DC, Ettinger also served as Consul
General of Israel to the Southwestern US. He is a former editor of
Contemporary Mideast Backgrounder, and is the author of the Jerusalem
Cloakroom series of reports. Contact him at yoramtex@netvision.net.il
or go to http://yoramettinger.newsnet.co.il.
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SEVEN KASSAMS INTO SDEROT SINCE LAST NIGHT
Posted by Hillel Fendel, June 16, 2006. |
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With Kassams falling not only in Sderot, but also further away, five hunger-strikers continue to demand safety from Palestinian rocket launchers in Hamas-controlled Gaza. Five Kassam rockets were fired towards Israel over the night, from different areas of the Gaza Strip, and two more later this morning. Of the first five, two fell in the westernmost point of the Negev - near Kerem Shalom, south of the Egyptian-Gaza border city of Rafah - while another one smashed into a field well to the north, near Sderot. Two others landed in Gaza itself. No casualties or damage was reported. Today's two rockets were of concern, in that they landed deeper into Israel than most others. One of them hit a greenhouse in Moshav Shuvah, just before the workers were about to show up. Shuvah, near Kfar Maimon and five kilometers west of Netivot, is over six kilometers (four miles) from Gaza - about twice the distance from Gaza to Sderot. This was apparently only the second time Shuvah has been hit by Kassams. A wave of rockets hit the town last December, sending two women into shock and damaging a home. In the meanwhile, five Sderot residents continue their five-day-old hunger-strike. They began it Sunday night outside the home of Sderot resident and former mayor Defense Minister Amir Peretz, in the midst of a wave of more than 100 rockets at the area over a four-day period. Two of them fainted yesterday when a Kassam rocket exploded nearby [see photo]. The strikers plan to remain at the site over the Sabbath. Hillel Fendel is senior news editor at Arutz Sheva (www.IsraelNN.com). |
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US POLICIES PROMOTE US DECLINE; THE ABBAS "PEACE PLAN" FOR WAR
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 16, 2006. |
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CLAN VIOLENCE Arab clans continue clashing in Gaza; gunmen keep kidnapping. We give the Arabs money, enabling them to stay there and continue to be inhumane to each other and to anyone who crosses their path, including foreign aid workers. They like gifts but not the bearers, especially if of a different religion. The world wants to confer statehood on those Arabs. The result would be to raid Israel and then get the UNO to declare Israeli retaliation a violation of P.A. sovereign rights. U.S. POLICIES PROMOTE U.S. DECLINE Thomas Jefferson believed that good ideas would prevail over poor ones, in a democracy. Americans are not so confident about that, any more. The government leaks some secrets, but punishes dissidents in its ranks for leaking others. It strikes out warnings by scientists that might cost industry money, as if politicians know science. Corporations sponsor science research that hides poor results. Universities hire mostly leftists. Their students shout down conservatives and even liberal voices of tolerance. Educators dumb down the curriculum, then slant it as much as do the media. All those groups are trying to keep only their views in the marketplace. That leaves the shelves half bare. How will we the people feed our minds from empty larders? How will our leaders determine suitable policy? Big business in the US is starting to change, but the prevailing attitude still is to avoid changes arising from public policy. General Motors has lost sales partly because it produces cars poorer in mileage and richer in pollution. Some public policy changes offer preference to less competent people, because of the social group into which they are categorized. Defense procurement seeks to foster employment as much as military need. Defense policy is directed sometimes for politics or ideology. This may work effectively or not, depending. Sen. Kerry would have abandoned the war on Iraq, because of his philosophical views. The result would have been a sharp rise in recruitment for terrorists, seeing that the US, once again, has lost its resolve. On the other hand, the US tries to have troops everywhere, allowing us an insufficient force anywhere. Government increasingly intrudes on our private lives, and not just by eavesdropping and by stifling criticism of Islam. US corporations are buying back their stock or switching to foreign stock exchanges, because of government-busybodies whose law imposed a confusing burden in a hasty attempt to prevent corporate fraud. Then there is the tax code, tens of thousands of pages long, thanks to lobbyists. Everyone wants some personal exception. Almost everyone thinks of tax revenue as something to take from other people and to give to him. Our society cannot keep this up. PROPAGANDA DEPENDS ON VIEWPOINT Playing in Dubai theaters, Munich, decried in the US for its moral equivalency between terrorists and their pursuers, planted seeds of doubt among the Muslims about terrorism. From their viewpoint, terrorists are heroes, but the film shows terrorists to be no better than the Israeli pursuers (Youssef Ibrahim, NY Sun, 5/30, p.7). IDF BACK IN GAZA Rocket launches against Israel from Gaza became such a problem, that the IDF is being sent back in, on occasion, to silence the rocket crews (NY Times, 5/31). France "deplores" the incursion and demands that the P.A. stop the rocket crews (IMRA, 5/31). But the P.A. won't. What is Israel supposed to do with treat violent Islamists, let them wreak their damage, the way the French handled its own Muslim rioters? THE ABBAS "PEACE PLAN" "The plan does not call for formal recognition of Israel, nor does it call upon Hamas to renounce violence or disarm, all of which are the preconditions set by the Quartet of Nations (United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia) for restoring international funding for the PA government." (Arutz-7, 6/12.) The NY Times emphasizes its claim that the plan would recognize Israel "implicitly." Signed Arab commitment is unreliable enough, but "implicit" recognition would be repudiated, just as the prisoner-authors have been repudiating their own plan. The plan calls for continued warfare against Israel. That is a war plan, as all the other parts of it confirm. It is not clear why Israel's Defense Minister calls it a peace plan, nor why the Foreign Minister ordered the government not to discuss it, calling it an internal P.A. matter. Israel seems inclined to agree to let or help Abbas build up his presidential guard from 3,000 to 10,000 men, as if that terrorist, who promises he will not repress terrorism, would use that force to repress terrorism (IMRA, 5/30). The head of the guard is a wanted commander of suicide bombings (IMRA, 5/31). Internal? It involves Israel, all through it. I think that the government knows its position is gangrenous, but tries to cover people's noses, so they don't detect the intellectual rot. ANSWERING TO OBSCURE WHAT IS UNSAID The government of Israel was asked to comment about reports that the US was barring Israel from incorporating Israeli enhancements into a new type of plane it would buy from the US. The spokesman called the reports useless, because Israel remains part of the plane's development team. IMRA pointed out that the comment ignores the content of the reports. What has Israel's helping to develop the plane got to do with Israel's inserting its own enhancements afterwards? (IMRA, 5/30.) PROPAGANDA AGAINST CHECKPOINTS In a 5/25 NY Times Op.-Ed., a Palestinian Arab "peace activist," whatever that is, complained bitterly about Israeli checkpoints in Judea-Samaria. He characterized the Israeli soldiers as "arrogant." (Was that subjective name-calling?) He wrote indignantly that they made a woman holding a crying baby dump her bag's contents on the ground. He said, "Israel says these measures are vital to stop suicide bombers from flooding into Israeli cities to terrorize the civilian population. But I can't imagine a suicide bomber standing in a long line deep inside the W. Bank, waiting for soldiers to check his ID and car. Determined people can always travel through the hills, avoiding the checkpoints." Actually, on May 29, the IDF arrested a suicide bomber and aide on mission, at a surprise checkpoint. Terrorists often don't wait at established checkpoints. That keeps them from pouring into Israel. There should be tables to show things on, but women with babies have tried to bring in bombs. The soldiers must be vigilant and check. If they don't, they get blown up. Therefore, the Times should have told its Op.-Ed. writer to omit the nonsense (Hillel Halkin, NY Sun, 5/30). Does that "peace activist" lament terrorism and the deaths of innocent Israelis? Most people who designate themselves as seekers of peace favor appeasement. They vehemently oppose Israeli self-defense but hardly chide Arab war criminals. They thus encourage aggression. Some "peace activists!" UNIVERSITY UNIFORMITY Under-Sec. of State Feith came Georgetown U. to teach diplomacy. Faculty, administrators, and students circulated a petition opposing his employment there. The petition claimed that he defended the use of torture, which the petition's author later acknowledged he had not. Another mistaken claim was that he has sought to diminish the importance of the Geneva Convention, which, in the Reagan administration, he was notable for defending. (I suppose they are referring to his finding the Convention inapplicable to Israel in the Territories. I heard him make that case, in person, on sound grounds of international law and the plain meaning and purpose of the Convention.) Signatories worry that his hiring is "reckless disregard for the potential damage to Georgetown's reputation." He is exceptionally qualified. They really object to his not being appeasement-minded. They are trying, as in universities all over the country, to keep out conservatives. They let in leftist extremists. Universities have become biased and censorious. The ideologues like uniformity, but they subvert higher education and forfeit an opportunity to correct their misimpressions about Iraq and also to ask him about Abu Ghraib and what his Pentagon unit found on whether Saddam and Al Qaeda worked together (Amity Shlaes, NY Sun, 5/31). What university reputation? Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
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JEWICIDE
Posted by May Leiner, June 16, 2006. |
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This was written by Stanley Zir, founder of the Victorious America website. |
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It now turns out that the baton for peace in the Middle East, which has been passed on to every US president since Jimmy Carter, is nothing other than a baton calling for Israel's self-destruction; more succinctly, a doctrine of "Jewicide". By initiating a peace plan that would continue to promote negotiation and concessions to the Palestinian population, while overlooking their habitual addiction to suicide attacks on Israeli citizens, it is now obvious that President George Bush, and other presidents before him, not only bought into an Arab Two-State Peace Scam, but swallowed the bait hook, line and sinker. This ruse has now reached the point where the nations of China and Russia are both willing to sacrifice the entire the nation of Israel for a chance to play Iran's oil market. In exchange for their support of Iran, they follow the Iranian "Oil for Jews" nuclear blackmail program. Now, Israel must depend on the nations of the European Union to ward off Iran's nuclear threat, nations who, time after time after time, indicated that sacrificing Israel's safety was a small price to pay for preventing their own economic disaster. With the possibility of Iran securing a nuclear dirty bomb, the risk of attack from within their own terrorist-infected nations is no longer one they are willing to take. As this cocktail turns deadly, don't hold your breath, Israel, when they offer you up on the chopping block to secure their own survival. To make matters worse, the American nation-building policy in the Middle East has been, and still is, preventing Israel from exercising her inalienable right to declare a full-scale war on the Palestinian terrorism-infected population, or to destroy Iran's nuclear power plant in order to save the nation from destruction. Did Kennedy wait first to win the hearts and minds of the Communist nations when the nuclear missiles landed in Cuba? No! The very survival of America was at stake. He did not even wait 90 days. Then why has President Bush been asking Israel to wait for more than three years, when the likelihood of Iran producing a nuclear bomb is no longer a remote possibility? Under what pretext did Israel's survival become an obstruction to America's nation-building policy in the Middle East? Is it that in order to be successful in this policy America had to first win the hearts and gain the trust of the majority of the Muslims in the region, in order to spread the doctrine of democracy there? Was it in a show of good faith that America continued to limit Israel's response when suicide bombers attacked her population because Muslims believe Israel is a terrorist state and the Palestinian people are the victims? America, you cannot keep downgrading Israel from a nation of freedom-loving people into a bargaining chip by asking their citizens to sacrifice their lives, in order to satisfy any part of a terrorist agenda, in the hope of establishing democracies in the nations of the Arab League. This is a policy that is doomed to failure. President Bush's surprise that 95% of the Palestinian people went to the polls and freely elected a terrorist organization speaks directly to this matter. Let's cut to the chase: the current Bush Doctrine and the Road Map have done nothing less then spawn a web of delusion in the minds of the Israeli people, which has now brought them full circle. Israel is again being asked to show restraint, this time in the face of a nuclear attack from Iran, a nation where the only thing that can be certified is the lies and deceptions that are the protocol to serve their tyrannical agenda. In the meantime, Israel will be hauled back to the United Nations, where China and Russia will leverage the threat of losing Iran's oil market to pressure the security council to water down sanctions or even oppose them. Instead, they will turn the focus on Israel as the final solution to end the Middle East conflict and Iran's nuclear threats. Inevitably, the self-serving policy of these two countries will result in the overwhelming majority of the nations of the world falsely blaming Iran's nuclear threat and Middle East unrest on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; thus, they will call for a hasty resolution to this conflict. Then what options are left on the table for Israel - negotiating with the terrorist Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas or the snake Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who wants an Arab "right of return"? In any case, it is a mute point when faced with the fact that 95% of the Palestine people chose Jihad, instead of liberty, through free elections. On 9/11, the unthinkable came to pass. Now, the same fools who did not think the Holocaust or the attack on the World Trade Center would happen, even after years of warnings, are the very same fools who are predicting that Iran will take anywhere from four months to four years to acquiring a nuclear bomb (and that is excluding the possibility of a nuclear suicidal dirty bomb attack on Israel by the Palestinians). Israel, you do the math. Stanley Zir is founder of www.Victoriousamerica.com, "dedicated to the completion of America's destiny... in fulfilling Liberty's mandate: 'Our Eternal War on Tyranny'...." |
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MAZEL
Posted by Rabbi Baruch Lederman, June 16, 2006. |
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Two non-Jewish burglars broke into a Jewish home in Bessarabia, Russia in the 1800s. They plundered the home, scouring every crack and crevice, every nook and cranny. In the course of their pilfering, they found two books in a remote spot that the family themselves didn't even realize were there and probably never would have found. After leaving the house, they took a closer look at the two books and realized that they were all in Hebrew. They were about to toss the books into the trash, when they noticed a Jew walking by. One of the robbers called out to a passing Jew, 'Won't you buy these two Jewish books from me for a ruble? If you won't, I'll discard them with the garbage.' The Jewish man, Shlomo Yehoshua, saw that they were written in Hebrew and he paid a ruble in order to rescue them from disgrace. However, he didn't know what they were. None of those men, neither the Jew nor the robbers had any idea that on that night, they were making history. The Vilna Gaon lived in the 1700s. His scholarship and piety are legendary. He stood head and shoulders above the greatest Rabbis of his time. Indeed he was a throwback to an earlier era. The Rosh Yeshiva, Horav Alter Henoch Leibowitz, shlit'a told us that Reb Chaim Volozhin said of the Gaon that he was K'Rashba Ulai K'Ramban (as great as the Rashba, perhaps as great as the Ramban). During his lifetime, the Vilna Gaon wrote numerous commentaries on the Tanach and Talmud, each a magnificent treasure of incalculable depth and brilliance. One of the greatest of those treasures was his inspired commentary of the complex Seder Zeroim of the Yerushalmi. Somehow, to the dismay of many, this invaluable commentary disappeared. The work was known to exist, and many great Torah scholars longed to see it, but it was not to be found. The extensive efforts made in order to locate it were futile and they had almost lost all hope of obtaining it. The famous publishers in the 1800s, the Romm family particularly made enormous efforts to recover the vanished commentary, but to no avail. Shlomo Yehoshua left the robbers with the two books he had "purchased". He didn't know what they were, but he knew that he couldn't allow the robbers to desecrate them. He still had to decide what to do with them. He held them in his home for a while, but eventually gave them to a friend whom he felt could do a better job watching and safeguarding them. Neither friend knew what they were, but they both were intrigued and certainly wanted to know. They also both agreed that they might be holy books and should therefore be given proper care and respect. The books changed hands several times. Any time along the way they could have wound up buried, but they eventually reached someone knowledgeable who realized that these books were written by the Vilna Gaon himself. It turned out that the home that was plundered had belonged to one of the family members of the Gaon zt'l. These two old books in fact were an old manuscript of the Vilna Gaon's elusive explanation of the Yerushalmi on Seder Zeroim and a newer copy of it. At that time, the Romm publishers had put out sales notices that they were about to publish the Yerushalmi. Upon seeing the notices, the knowledgeable man purchased the manuscripts cheaply and traveled to bring them to Romm. The publishers happily bought them from him for a handsome price. One of the workers on the project proudly recounted, "We were the means by which the public received it. We were able to affix it as an adornment to our holy literature and the posuk 'And a blessing to the chief purveyor' was fulfilled in us." The events that led to the Vilna Gaon's commentary on Yerushalmi Seder Zeroim coming to light, were nothing short of a miracle. Chazal's comment about such stories is that, "Everything needs mazel (good fortune), even the sefer Torah in the heichal (sanctuary)!" In this case it needed good fortune, and a couple of robbers.
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JUDICIAL SUPPRESSION OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH IN ISRAEL
Posted by Steven Plaut, June 16, 2006. |
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"Free Speech for me but not for thee," is by Jonathan Rosenblum. It
appeared in the Jerusalem Post today. It is archived at
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The Torah contains many prohibitions against speaking derogatorily of others. When it comes to the laws of lashon hara, even truth is not a defense, except in certain narrowly defined circumstances. Underlying the proscriptions against derogatory speech is the idea that we create our world through our speech. If we continually view others with a jaundiced eye, and fail to judge them favorably, our world becomes a nasty, brutish place. The Sin of the Spies, about which we read in this week's Torah portion, was to create by their negative report of the Land that G-d had promised a false reality. Last week someone with whom I maintain an e-mail correspondence published what I considered an over-the-top attack on the entire chareidi community. And I told him so. He replied that if I wanted to have a dialogue with him, I'd have to eschew descriptions like "screed," "bad journalism," and "ignorant." Though each of these descriptions could have been defended, I agreed. The dialogue was more important to me than scoring points. One of the problems with today's Israeli society is that there is too little dialogue. Too often conversation is precluded at the outset by one party shooting a verbal arrow across the bow that makes it impossible for the other to listen to anything he or she has to say. WHILE AS A TORAH JEW, I attempt to maintain a degree of restraint in my own speech, I do not want the secular Israeli state to attempt to impose a regime of restraint through the law. One of the baleful consequences of the over-involvement of the Supreme Court in setting national norms has been the conflation of what is right, proper or moral with what is legal. The two categories must remain distinct. There is no inconsistency between advocating particular modes of speech, and criticizing those who fail to meet those standards, on the one hand, and supporting a legal regime that places few, if any, restrictions on expressions of opinion. Experience has shown that legal prohibitions will too often be applied in a highly selective and discriminatory fashion. And the resulting perception that the legal rules are manipulated on behalf of one side of the political or religious spectrum undermines the legitimacy of Israeli democracy in the eyes of the public. Nadia Matar's current trial on charges of "insulting a public official" is a case in point of selective enforcement, as this paper pointed out this week ("Noxious Speech," June 11). No doubt Yonatan Bassi was insulted by a letter from Matar likening the Disengagement Authority to a modern day "Judenrat." But I suspect that Court President Aharon Barak was no less hurt to read his colleague Mishel Cheshin's characterization of his legal position on the citizenship law in Ha'aretz: "Justice Aharon Barak is ready for 30, 50 people to be blown up, but we will have human rights." And doubtless Chief of Staff Dan Halutz took umbrage at signs carried by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's daughter Dana and her fellow Machsom Watch demonstrators labeling him a "murderer," at a demonstration protesting the deaths of seven Palestinians on Gaza Beach last Friday night. Matar, Cheshin, and Olmert were all making a political point, and as with much political speech, they chose the sharpest possible imagery to do so. (Only Olmert's charge can be objectively refuted, if, as now appears clear, the IDF bore no responsibility for the explosion that killed six members of one family.) The only difference between them is that there is absolutely no chance that Cheshin or Olmert will ever stand trial. No less troubling than the Matar prosecution is a libel judgment entered last week against Haifa University economics professor Steven Plaut. Nazareth Magistrate Reem Naddaf fined Plaut 80,000 shekels and assessed him 15,000 shekels in legal costs for comments about Ben-Gurion University lecturer Neve Gordon. The United States Supreme Court recognized long ago in New York Times vs. Sullivan (1964) that private libel actions can be employed to stifle free speech. Plaut's conviction is a case in point. Plaut's rhetorical style can only be described as "take-no-prisoners," which, in my opinion, makes him less effective than his brilliance warrants. But his pieces are always well-documented so that any reader can decide for himself the appropriateness of his characterizations. Plaut has a running vendetta with post-Zionist academics, like Gordon. Among his libelous acts, according to Magistrate Naddaf, was forwarding (not writing) a sarcastic e-mail of condolence to Gordon and other left-wing academics after the IDF's targeted killing of Hamas bomb-maker Mohammed Def. Another was a reference to Yasser Arafat as Gordon's "guru," after Gordon violated IDF orders to enter Arafat's Ramallah compound, where he was photographed holding hands with him. Finally, in a piece entitled "Ha'aretz promotes 'Jews for Hitler,'" Plaut attacked Ha'aretz for publishing Gordon's laudatory review of Norman Finkelstein's "The Holocaust Industry," in which the latter claims that the number of those killed in the Holocaust has been "grossly exaggerated," as part of a systematic manipulation by world Jewry to deflect criticism of Israel's "racist" and "Nazi" treatment of Palestinians. (The "Jews" in Plaut's title more plausibly referred to Finkelstein than Gordon.) That any of this could be actionable boggles the mind. Many others have reached the same conclusion as Plaut about Gordon's antics. Such a modulated voice as Bar-Ilan University's Gerald Steinberg has described as "anti-Semitic" a group of caricatures of Israeli soldiers "oppressing" innocent-looking Palestinians, published by Physicians for Human Rights, which Gordon formerly headed. Maariv op-ed editor Ben-Dror Yemini accuses Gordon, along with Ilan Pappe, of "spreading their articles dripping with anti-Zionist poison all over the world, including anti-Semitic websites." Gordon's review of Finkelstein's book was posted on the website of Ernst Zundel, recently deported from Canada to stand charges for Holocaust denial in Germany. Nor has Gordon been restrained in his criticisms of Israeli "fascism." In a widely published article, Gordon labeled Gaza Brigade Commander Gen. Aviv Kochavi a "war criminal" in the title. Kochavi was subsequently advised by the IDF legal advisor not to take up studies at the Royal College of Defense Studies in England, out of fear of "war crimes" prosecutions. Plaut's sharp pen is not everyone's cup of tea -- surely not Gordon's. But until the day comes when all Israelis recognize, that "death and life are in the power of the tongue" (Proverbs 18:21), we are better off ordering our legal regulation of speech according to George Orwell's dictum: "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist,
a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author
of "The Scout." He frequently comments -- both seriously and
satirically -- on Israeli politics and the left wing academic
community. His website address is
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THREE CHEERS FOR AUSTRALIA
Posted by Marion Dreyfus, June 16, 2006. |
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I wish the leaders of our country would take a stand like Australia..... Muslims who want to live under Islamic Sharia law were told on Wednesday to get out of Australia, as the government targeted radicals in a bid to head off potential terror attacks. A day after a group of mainstream Muslim leaders pledged loyalty to Australia at a special meeting with Prime Minister John Howard, he and his ministers made it clear that extremists would face a crackdown. Treasurer Peter Costello, seen as heir apparent to Howard, hinted that some radical clerics could be asked to leave the country if they did not accept that Australia was a secular state and its laws were made by parliament. "If those are not your values, if you want a country which has Sharia law or a theocratic state, then Australia is not for you," he said on national television. "I'd be saying to clerics who are teaching that there are two laws governing people in Australia, one the Australian law and another the Islamic law, that is false. If you can't agree with parliamentary law, independent courts, democracy, and would prefer Sharia law and have the opportunity to go to another country, which practices it, perhaps, then, that's a better option," Costello said. Asked whether he meant radical clerics would be forced to leave, he said those with dual citizenship could possibly be asked to move to the other country. Education Minister Brendan Nelson later told reporters that Muslims who did not want to accept local values should "clear off". "Basically, people who don't want to be Australians, and they don't want to live by Australian values and understand them, well then they can basically clear off," he said. Separately, Howard angered some Australian Muslims on Wednesday by saying he supported spy agencies monitoring the nation's mosques. Quote: IMMIGRANTS, NOT AUSTRALIANS, MUST ADAPT. Take It Or Leave It! I am tired of this nation worrying about whether we are offending some individual or their culture. Since the terrorist attacks on Bali, we have experienced a surge in patriotism by the majority of Australians. However, the dust from the attacks had barely settled when the "politically correct" crowd began complaining about the possibility that our patriotism was offending others. I am not against immigration, nor do I hold a grudge against anyone who is seeking a better life by coming to Australia. However, there are a few things that those who have recently come to our country, and apparently some born here, need to understand. This idea of Australia being a multicultural community has served only to dilute our sovereignty and our national identity. As Australians, we have our own culture, our own society, our own language and our own lifestyle. This culture has been developed over two centuries of struggles, trials and victories by millions of men and women who have sought freedom. We speak mainly ENGLISH, not Spanish, Lebanese, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, or any other language. Therefore, if you wish to become part of our society, then learn the language! Most Australians believe in God. This is not some Christian, right wing, political push but a fact because Christian men and women, on Christian principles, founded this nation, and this is clearly documented. It is certainly appropriate to display it on the walls of our schools. If God offends you, then I suggest you consider another part of the world as your new home, Because God is part of our culture. We will accept your beliefs and will not question why, all we ask is that you accept ours and live in harmony and peaceful enjoyment with us. If the Southern Cross offends you, or you don't like "A Fair Go", then you should seriously consider a move to another part of this planet. We are happy with our culture and have no desire to change, and we really don't care how you did things where you came from. By all means keep your culture but do not force it on others. This is OUR COUNTRY, OUR LAND, and OUR LIFESTYLE, and we will allow you every opportunity to enjoy all this, but once you are done complaining, whining, and griping about Our Flag, Our Pledge, Our Christian beliefs, or Our Way of Life, I highly encourage you take advantage of one other great Australian freedom, "THE RIGHT TO LEAVE." If you aren't happy here then LEAVE. We didn't force you to come here. You asked to be here. So accept the country YOU accepted. Pretty easy really, when you think about it. I figure if we all keep passing this to our friends (and enemies) it will also, sooner or later get back to the complainers, lets all try, please. PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO EVERYONE, PERHAPS WE CAN CREATE A GROUND SWELL AND SEND OUR U.S. POLITICIANS THE MESSAGE THAT THE VAST MAJORITY OF US BELIEVE AS THE AUSSIES DO........ Contact Marion Dreyfus by email at dreyfusmarion@hotmail.com |
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EUROPE NEEDS AN ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT
Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, June 15, 2006. |
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Fundamentalist Islamic adherents, inculcated by misogynist racist hate-filled uncivilized Wahhabi doctrine, view themselves as citizens of their malignantly interpreted Koran, thus retain no allegiance to and will not tolerate civilized secular governmental structures. A civilized secularly based tolerant Constitutional (oral or written) republic legally insuring minority rights, thus protecting the proclivities of citizens of all faiths and non-faiths, is the antithesis of a culture based on such theocratic dogma. In effect, a fundamentalist Wahhabi Islamic culture cannot peacefully blend within civilized cultures, considering members of such cultures to be infidels that must be eliminated, thus remain an ever-present danger to the health and safety of those civilized denizens. Live and let live is not an option within the muddled mind-sets of Wahhabi infected bigots. Naïve Europeans, unwilling to grasp the presence of the festering fundamentalist Wahhabi infection, imported from proximate impoverished lands, ready to burst and infiltrate the bowels of their collectively secular social structure, need an immediate wake-up call. Furthermore, such Europeans must acquaint themselves with a prescient fact, that Israel, a modernized technologically advanced tolerant secularly bent democratic bastion of hope within an ever-dysfunctional Middle East, must be viewed as an ally whose basic values coincide with theirs, thus for the sake of self-interest all anti-Zionist fervor must forthwith cease and desist. Clearly, anti-Zionist sentiment maligning the Jewish State, ever-prevalent within many non-Muslim civilized nations but especially indigenous to Europe, loomed as one substantial factor persuading Israel to cede Gaza. Indeed, it is difficult to make one's case, thus garner sufficient support to keep one's territory, when widely and unjustly perceived as an imperialist occupier of poor Palestinian Arab waifs by one's trading partners. Ironically, Europe's malignantly skewed perspective concerning this issue, perhaps unable to appropriately deal with its own guilt-ridden post-Holocaust syndrome, could eventually create a perilous scenario for that continent. An oil pipeline traversing Turkey between the Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea is in the planning stages. European tankers docked in the Mediterranean, of course, would deliver the fossil fuel to accessible ports of call. Lest we forget, the emerging Persian Islamic fundamentalist nuclear power Iran boasts of an undersea missile no ship, including oil tanker, can outrun. Gaza, now in chaos, however likely to be controlled by Hamas radicals, abuts the Mediterranean Sea. If such a cadre of fundamentalist militants acquired one of Iran's seaworthy missiles of mass destruction, only Israel's ever-vigilant navy and air force guarding a radically altered stretch of coastline, would be able to prevent a launched war-headed missile from striking a loaded European oil tanker, or for that matter with remote guidance any European port such as Rome, St Tropez, Monte Carlo, or Barcelona. Indeed, the maliciously skewered "Zionist" nation that many Europeans detest might someday be their only defense against those perceived poor Palestinian waifs, in fact jihad junkies, they so support. Talk about irony! |
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SLEEPLESS IN SDEROT
Posted by Judy Lash Balint, June 15, 2006. |
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In the early 1990s I spent quite a bit of time in Sderot, one of Israel's southern development towns that sits at the northeastern tip of the Gaza Strip. At the time, I was coordinator of the Operation Exodus campaign of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle and Sderot was our twin community. The idea was that a portion of the money raised in Seattle for Soviet emigration would be channeled directly to Sderot to help them absorb an additional 11,000 immigrants. The entire population of Sderot back then was only 12,000, so the town was expected to almost double its size over a period of just a few years. I remember sitting in the sweltering conference room of the bare-bones municipality building in 1990, as city officials explained where the new neighborhood of pre-fab houses would be built, not far from the burgeoning industrial zone. There was optimism in the air despite the obvious challenges of integrating such large numbers of people who had little in common with the largely North African Sderot old-timers. The newcomers would revitalize the town and stimulate the economy we were told, and Sderot would become an attractive regional center. A safe community, secure in its uncontroversial status inside the Green Line. These memories came flooding back yesterday as I sat in that same conference room listening to Eli Moyal, the ashen-faced, exhausted and exasperated Likud mayor of Sderot. Not much has changed in the modest building--the same tired-looking, once-white stucco covers the walls, and the giant size map of the city in the conference room hasn't been updated. But the most striking difference in that conference room is the 13 pictures of Sderot residents killed in terror and Kassam attacks. Several of them are children, including Ayala Abucassis, 17, who was killed by a Kassam rocket last year on a Sderot street. A couple of the terror victims are Russian-speaking immigrants. Since the Israeli withdrawal from Gush Katif last summer, Sderot has become the new address for a barrage of Kassam rockets fired from the area of the now-destroyed Jewish communities of Dugit, Alei Sinai and Nisanit. According to IDF statistics, more than 600 Kassams have been launched against Israel from the Gaza Strip since last September. Several have targeted the Ashkelon industrial area, but it's Sderot, barely 3 miles away from Beit Hanoun, that has borne the brunt of the onslaught. Last weekend alone, seventy of the crude arrowhead missiles were launched toward Israel. Four Israelis were wounded and a few buildings were damaged. Every time there's an incoming Kassam, a warning siren sounds. It's called "Red Dawn" and provides all of 15 seconds for people to dive next to a wall or under the bed. To say that the citizens of Sderot are on edge would be a severe understatement. A group of residents is currently conducting a hunger strike in a small Sderot park. Their demand is simple -- get the IDF to strike Beit Hanoun so they can live in peace and quiet. The park where they've set up their protest tent is a few yards away from the home of Defense Minister Amir Peretz, leader of Israel's Labor party. Peretz hasn't been home much lately -- he's too busy issuing empty threats from Jerusalem. On Wednesday, Peretz clearly warned Hamas to stop launching rockets at southern Israel or "face the wrath of the IDF." Today, one day later, when a Kassam collapses an industrial building in Sderot injuring one worker, Peretz tells the Knesset plenum his preference would be for both sides to work out their differences within the context of an agreement. Anger at such government policy is palpable all over Sderot. Over at the AMIT High School, a few short yards away from the municipality and Sderot's central square, students are squeezed into the ground-floor classrooms since May 21 when a Kassam burst through the red-tile roof shattering the ceiling of the 11th grade classroom. The teenage boys were finishing morning prayers in the school's synagogue when the missile hit. "They're shocked, afraid. Everyone is frustrated at the government," Rabbi Amit Orenbuch, the soft-spoken school's principal says. "The students feel that nothing is as it should be," he goes on. Orenbuch, himself a seven-year resident of Sderot says this is the worst period he remembers in the town. A few of the teenagers come out to talk to reporters. In the typical manner of teenage boys, they put on a facade of bravado -- tense smiles cover their fears as they proclaim how they're OK and have no difficulties dealing with the situation. Mayor Moyal has a more sober assessment of the effect of the Kassams on Sderot's children. "More than 50 percent of kids here are suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome," he asserts. "It manifests in all kinds of ways -- they're sleeping in their parent's beds, can't concentrate on their studies, taking pills," he adds. Moyal pledges that by the end of the month no kids will be left in Sderot. All 5,000 children will be sent to summer camps in other parts of the country to protect them from additional trauma. Moyal isn't placated by government promises to reinforce schools with Kassam-proof roofs. "I don't believe in protection -- what we need is to prevent the terrorists launching missiles at us. Israel isn't really fighting terror, our government is trying to negotiate with terrorists." The Likud mayor doesn't mince words in conveying his disgust at his Palestinian neighbors. "There's no reason the Palestinians keep on shitting on us after we took all our troops out of Gaza. It's just blatant hatred, that's why they're shooting at us. There are no Palestinian demands on this land. I'm calling on the citizens of Sderot not to go anywhere -- we'll stay here forever. Not because we're strong, but because we're right. We won't give them the satisfaction of giving into terror." At his news conferences with world leaders this week, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert barely mentioned the suffering citizens of Sderot. Mr. Olmert shouldn't expect a quiet homecoming. Pictures of Sderot at http://flickr.com/photos/jerusalemdiaries/ for some unusual photos from Israel. Judy Lash Balint is an investigative journalist and author of "Jerusalem Diaries: In Tense Times" (Gefen). It is available for purchase from www.israelbooks.com |
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BAD NEWS FROM DANIEL PIPES ABOUT CHANCES FOR PEACE
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 15, 2006. |
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Daniel Pipes, in the interview below, gives us some information that bodes very ill for the future of peace in the Middle East. "The great debate among Palestinians is not over goals; the elimination of Israel is a consensus goal among 80 percent of the Palestinian population, while the other 20% has no voice. The debate among that 80% for two decades has been how best to deal with (i.e.., destroy) Israel." (about mid-way down the text of the interview). If this is true, then there is no hope for peace via negotiations or compromise or concessions or targetted assassinations or the imprisonment of terrorists. Pipes does not quote a source for this statistic. But, even if it is skewed, the conclusion is still the same. Even if only 50% held the concensus goal of destroying Israel, as long as the other 50% were voiceless, the destruction goal would guide Palestinian Authority policy. Even if the percentages were 20% vs an 80% voiceless, that 20%, being violent terrorist murderers who have no compunctions about terrorizing their own people, would guide PA policy. What percentage of Germany was NAZI in 1939? I don't know. But certainly there were some (many?, most? surely not all?) Germans who were not NAZIs, but who voicelessly did not oppose it. And NAZI priorities ruled Germany until its defeat. If the ruling forces in Palestinian society are committed to Israel's destruction, and the other forces in the society are voiceless and powerless ( or choose to not exercize their power or make their voices heard), then the only way that there can be peace is if/when Isrrael does to the Palestinian people what the Allied Powers did to the German people. 1.) war with the uncompromising goal of total defeat for the terrorists, even at the cost of civilian casualties (remember Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki) 2.) total defeat means that the terrorists accept unconditional surrender (as did Germany after Hitler's death) 3.) part of unconditional surrender means the dismantling of the terror forces, imprisonment of their leaders, total and permanent disarmament, disbanding of disarmed terrorists, and the official goverment decree that terrorism and incitement to terrorism and incitement to hatred are all illegal in Palestinian society....including mosques, schools, media, and government pronouncements. Only then, with the terrorist leaders dead or in jail, can moderate leaders emerge who can lead the Palestinians to a sovereign state, run by rule of law, behaving in a civilized manner, in peace and cooperation with Israel. Your thoughts? The Interview below, entitled "I watch with frustration as the Israelis don't get the point," was conducted by Ruthie Blum, on Jerusalem Post, June 9, 2006. It is archived at www.danielpipes.org/article/3667 |
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In Israel last month to receive the "Guardian of Zion" award from Bar-Ilan University's Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies, Middle East scholar and author Daniel Pipes pulled no punches. In his acceptance speech at the King David Hotel before a distinguished gathering of academics, politicians, business people and the media, Pipes did something that - while perhaps, par for his own lonely course of late - was unconventional to say the least. It certainly strayed from the pro forma podium fare that was the focus of his predecessors' professions of dedication to the Jewish state and its capital. Rather than emphasizing his heart-felt connection to the land and people of Israel, he gave a lecture on "The Muslim Claim to Jerusalem." With the customary articulateness and the scholarly adherence to historical data that are the trademarks of his writings - among them a weekly column in these pages - Pipes produced empirical evidence to demonstrate that any and all Arab claims to "al-Quds" are, and have always been, merely utilitarian. Period. In other words, Pipes showed himself a Guardian of Zion and Jerusalem not by direct professions of love, but by refuting the fallacious arguments of those he identifies, in no uncertain terms, as Israel's mortal enemies. Another feature of the annual ceremony that distinguished it from that of previous years was the opening of the floor to questions from the audience following the lecture. This spiced the festive dinner with the flavor of a debate; though in this case, there was clearly more a sense of serene agreement among the few hundred attendees than skepticism or hostility. Which may have been something of an unusual experience for Pipes, who is under constant attack from the Left for his portrayal of the Islamist agenda, and for his calling to task the departments of Middle East studies at North American universities - through his Middle East Forum's Campus Watch project - for what he considers to be academic malpractice. Nor has he been winning any popularity contests among former political and intellectual allies on the Right - not, that is, since conservatives first split over the wisdom of Ariel Sharon's unilateral disengagement plan. While neoconservative appointees in the Bush Administration - like many Bush-backers elsewhere - have remained loyal to the policies of the American president and the former Israeli prime minister, others, like Pipes, have been sounding alarm bells about both. In an hour-long interview with The Jerusalem Post in his suite at the King David on the eve of the award ceremony, Pipes pinpointed what he considers to be Israel's fundamental failing: a shift from victory-driven warfare to conflict management. ---------------------- "In the end, one side will win and one side will lose," he said, shrugging matter-of-factly, his mild-mannered tone seemingly at odds with his message. "What's so striking is that Israel, which is a modern, sophisticated, globalized country, seems not to understand this. Very few Israelis are aware of the need to win. As an outsider, I watch with frustration as the Israelis don't get the point." Were you surprised to have won this particular award? Yes, it came as a surprise. Why? Well, the prior recipients were people I admired, and I didn't quite see myself in their league. [Previous recipients were William Safire, Arthur Cohn, Ruth Wisse, Charles Krauthammer, Cynthia Ozick, Sir Martin Gilbert, A.M. Rosenthal, Herman Wouk and Elie Wiesel.] You didn't see yourself "in their league" or you don't share their views on Israel? Those who won this award have been, as the title suggests, "Guardians of Zion" - in other words, defenders of Israel. That description applies less well to me. If anything, I lambaste Israel. What do you "lambaste" Israel for? Israelis have lost their way when it comes to relations with the Arabs, and more specifically, when it comes to war goals. I criticize Israelis - and I mean the body politic, not specifically the leadership - for thinking that management of the conflict is the best that can be done. As opposed to ...? As opposed to winning. Over the course of the past 15 years, one has seen a host of proposals on how to manage the conflict. Some of these proposals became government policy; many others are simply proposals. What they have in common, from Left to Right, is that they see this conflict as unwinnable, as merely manageable. The security fence is a case in point. I am for it. Clearly, it has had - and in the future, when it's completed, will have even more - the effect of keeping out would-be murderers. But a wall is not the way to win a conflict. A wall is a tactical mechanism to protect oneself, not a strategic way of winning a war. Winning a war requires imagination - perspective - to impose your will on your enemy. That is classically what victory means: imposing your will on your enemy. It doesn't mean massacring or impoverishing the enemy, but causing him to give up his goals. This notion is virtually absent from Israeli political discussion. You say that Israelis have "lost their way" in relation to the Arabs. This implies a shift. When do you see this shift from aiming to win the conflict to merely managing it as having taken place? A profound shift took place during the decade between the 1982 war in Lebanon and the 1993 Oslo Accord. Is criticizing Israel the only difference between yourself and prior Rennert award winners? No, there is another. I focus on Muslims rather than defend Israel. I don't spend time on the British boycott of Israeli universities, or on the bias against Israel at the United Nations. I don't justify Israel. I don't fit the pattern in the sense that I look at Israel primarily from the Palestinian, Arab, Muslim point of view. My work involves not so much the defense of Israel as looking at Syria, the Palestinians, etc. Is there really such a thing as an Arab "point of view?" After all, there are so many different Arab and Muslim countries in the world. There are enormous numbers of differences and exceptions among them, but I think in general one can draw a broad outline of a viewpoint, yes. So, from an Arab point of view, what constitutes the imposition of will on an enemy? I understand this conflict between Israel and the Arabs to be defined by war goals. Israel's war goals consist of winning the acceptance of its Arab enemies, in particular that of the Palestinians. Acceptance means no longer using force - or other means, for that matter - to eliminate the Jewish state. The Arab war goals, conversely, are to eliminate the Jewish state. I see this as binary - as black and white. One side wins, one side loses. Compromise cannot take place. Oslo was a grand experiment in compromise, and it failed. In the end, one side imposes its will on the other. Now, if the Arabs impose their will on Israelis, it means there will be no sovereign Jewish state. There could be a Jewish population living under Palestinian or other Arab rule. Or it could be that the Jews flee. It could be that they're murdered. But there's no more sovereign Jewish state. Should the Israelis win, the Arabs acknowledge, however grudgingly, that Israel's there and is a permanent fact of life. They don't have to have trade with it, or sponsor Hebrew classes in their schools - these would be nice things, but they're not necessary. A cold peace, as it were, would work. But unlike the one with Egypt, there truly must be acceptance. What's so striking is that Israel, which is a modern, sophisticated, globalized country, seems not to understand this. Very few Israelis are aware of the need to win. As an outsider, I watch with frustration as the Israelis don't get the point. And the Palestinians? The Palestinians, who have not scaled the same sophisticated heights, ironically, do understand that their goal is to win. How much of this is connected to pressure from Washington? I have been struck for 15 years now by how Israelis make their own destiny with little reference to Washington. Looking at the relationship schematically, until the 1967 war, Washington exerted little diplomatic pressure on Israel, for there was no one to negotiate with on the Arab side. But then, even in the midst of the Six Day War, president Lyndon B. Johnson had formulated the outline of the land-for-peace policy that all these decades later still drives US diplomacy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict. This became more real when [Egyptian President Anwar] Sadat took office and with the diplomacy that did ensue, especially in 1973. For the next 20 years, constant tension divided Washington and Jerusalem. Washington advised Jerusalem to take the plunge, and Jerusalem responded with caution, pointed out that the Arabs say one thing in Arabic and another in English - that they are not sincere. This tension finally dissolved in 1993, when, under [prime minister] Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli government said, in effect, "OK, United States, you're right. Let's give it a try." Since then, there basically has been no tension, other than modest, temporary strains under [prime minister Binyamin] Netanyahu. The degree of agreement between Washington and Jerusalem has been remarkable, as has been Jerusalem's initiative. Consider three examples: The Oslo Accord was done in Oslo, not in Washington, to keep the Americans from knowing about it. At the tail end of [prime minister] Ehud Barak's and [US president] Bill Clinton's time in office, in January 2001, the former pushed the latter to come up with some arrangement that would finally settle matters at Taba. And there was [prime minister Ariel] Sharon's change of heart concerning Gaza in November 2003. What about "occupation"? What is its role in all of this? The Palestinians hold the notion of occupation dear to them, to the point that no matter what Israel does - even withdraw forces completely from Gaza - they say the occupation continues. Israelis are trying to "un-occupy," in terms of currency, utilities and much else, and the Palestinians are saying, "No, we're your unwanted stepchild, and we're yours." They found that this word, ihtilal (occupation), is a very useful one, domestically and internationally. What is the ultimate Palestinian war goal, then, statehood or the elimination of Israel? Oh, definitely the elimination of Israel. That is to say, there is far wider agreement on this than on the notion of a Palestinian state. Recall that making the region Israel controls into southern Syria drove Arab politics in the early 1950s. Then came the heyday of Pan-Arab nationalism in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Today, Hamas strives for an Islamic state whose boundaries need not be those of Mandatory Palestine. All of these outlooks agree on the need to eliminate Israel but disagree on what should replace it. There is much talk now about the regimes in Egypt and Jordan being in danger of destabilization as a result of the chaos in the Palestinian Authority. If so, why are these countries more actively siding with the PA than with Israel? The Palestinian cause is a challenge to most Arab leaders - something they ride at their peril. It has a potential to challenge their regimes from the outside. So they handle the issue with great caution. Most Arab leaders, especially those of Jordan and Egypt, would like to end this conflict. Indeed, in both cases, their predecessors tried, by signing formal peace agreements with Israel, to pull out. Why did that not succeed? In both cases, the population said no. They had given their proxy to their governments and said, "Here, leaders, you're in charge of anti-Zionism." When the leaders betrayed them by signing formal peace agreements - Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994 - the popular reaction was, "We're taking back our proxy; we've got to do this ourselves." You see a ratcheting up in popular attitudes toward Israel? I lived in Egypt for three years before the signing of the peace agreement with Israel, and Israel was hardly ever a topic. Egyptians did not engage in economic boycotts of firms that were dealing with Israel or rumored to be sending money to Israel. No songs celebrated hatred of Israel. Political cartoons were nasty toward Israel, but just politically, not religiously. I conclude that we see a far deeper anti-Israel sentiment in the post-1979 period than before then. The same goes for Jordan, where the king signed a particularly warm agreement with Israel, the popular reaction to which was, "No! We will not have trade. We will not have other forms of contact with Israel." What does this imply? That, contrary to common perception - according to which Arab governments foment trouble with Israel as a cheap way of diverting attention from their own malpractices - the issue of Israel is a grass-roots issue that scares them. We witnessed this, for example, during the violence of late 2000-early 2001, when massive demonstrations took place on Arab streets and the governments dealt with them very gingerly. A prime minister might head a demonstration in a show of solidarity, but he was clearly nervous about it. Any comments on the actions of the Egyptian and Jordanian governments lately? They have begun to revert to their pre-1967 roles - Egypt in Gaza and Jordan in the West Bank. They exert nothing like the control they enjoyed before June 5, 1967, but both governments now - with Israelis pulling back and Hamas surging in power - are nervously concerned with what's taking place in their former territories. Many Israelis who favored disengagement from Gaza say that the success of the withdrawal can be seen in the chaos - perhaps civil war, even - now taking place in the PA between Hamas and Fatah. I disagree. First, I see no causal effect between the Israeli withdrawal and the anarchy in the PA - which began much earlier. I documented it from February 2004 in a blog titled "The Growing Palestinian Anarchy." Second, I'm not altogether sure that this violence benefits Israel. Short-term, there's a diversion of attention away from Israel. But long-term, the forces unleashed now might well harm Israel. Third, this surely is not the way to judge the withdrawal, which needs to be assessed from Israel's point of view on the basis of whether it has enhanced Israeli interests and security or not. I'd say there are strong reasons to claim it has not. Is there a causal relationship between Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon and the events leading up to disengagement from Gaza? I definitely think there was. There are a few pieces of evidence. First, a number of statements by Palestinian leaders indicated how deeply they were influenced by the Israeli withdrawal in May 2000. Second, it vindicated the Palestinian use of violence. This requires some background. The great debate among Palestinians is not over goals; the elimination of Israel is a consensus goal among 80 percent of the Palestinian population, while the other 20% has no voice. The debate among that 80% for two decades has been how best to deal with Israel. The PLO answer is to engage it. Look at all the benefits it won by making fraudulent statements and giving empty assurances: It got the Palestinian Authority, a proto-military force, greater world support and so forth. To which Hamas replies that the PLO has degraded itself, lost its purpose and betrayed the purity of the cause. This has been the key debate among Palestinians. In this light, the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, driven by Hizbullah, signalled that Palestinians, too, can achieve their goals without negotiations, without trucking with the enemy. Just relentlessly hammer away, kill, attack, year after year, and the Israelis will take flight. There's no need for negotiations, for agreements, for international involvement. This powerful argument resonated in Palestinian circles. How so? The first manifestation of this came just two months later, in July 2000 at Camp David. Despite Barak's quite extraordinary offers, Yasser Arafat not only said no, but he did so without making any reciprocal offers. I mean, he was pressured to go there by the US government. And he showed up. But he said no to everything, and the talks collapsed. Two short months later, the violence began - violence in good part inspired by Hizbullah tactics - a very different form of violence from what had been seen before: particularly the suicide bombing, a Hizbullah tactic, and the use of videos to build up the would-be suicide bomber giving testimonial, or then showing the actual scene of the attack. So, whether tactical or strategic, Hizbullah set the pace. Showed the Palestinians how to do it. How did this affect the withdrawal from Gaza? The dominant Palestinian slogan last summer was, "Today Gaza, tomorrow Jerusalem." There's no question that they saw the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza as a vindication of their use of force. I'd be hard-pressed to gainsay them, because it's quite clear to me that had there not been violence in Gaza, the Israeli military and the Israeli civilians would still be there. They only left because of the violence. And the West Bank? The same applies there. Should there be a withdrawal there, too, it's because it became too difficult. When things get painful - whether in Lebanon or Gaza - Israelis leave. That sends a signal that violence works. It presumably will be applied in Jerusalem, Haifa and Tel Aviv as well. How would the White House have responded after President Bush's June 24, 2002 speech, had Sharon gone to Washington and, instead of proposing disengagement, requested that the PA be treated as an enemy that had to be defeated militarily as part of the war on terror? It would have been a hard sell. US policy towards the Arab-Israeli conflict, since 1993, has been premised on the idea that since 1993, Palestinians and Israelis are "partners for peace" - that their war is over and it's now a matter of finding the modalities of a resolution. Therefore, the sort of things that the US government does vis-à-vis the Taliban or al-Qaida are wrong, illegitimate and counterproductive for Israel to pursue vis-à-vis the Palestinians. America is at war, while Israel is making peace. The US government would have to be addressed on this level, something along the lines of, "No, Mr. President, we're not at peace; we're at war, just like you are. We tried negotiations, but they failed. Just as the US government is engaged in an asymmetric war, where the vastness of the US is arrayed against al-Qaida, so, too, in a lesser disproportion, Israel is arrayed against the PLO, Hamas, Islamic Jihad." But Israeli leaders did not make the case, because it is not their view. Instead, Sharon agreed with Bush in principle and actually disagreed a lot on the ground - which was a reasonable approach, and it did work. I came out against that June 24th speech, which I thought rewarded terrorism. But I understand that the Israeli prime minister would rather not tangle with the US president. So he said, "Good idea" - both with this and the roadmap - and then implemented his own way. I, as an American foreign policy analyst, don't need to do that. As an American foreign policy analyst, how do you explain the split among the neoconservatives regarding the Israeli policy of unilateral territorial withdrawals? I attribute the split to Sharon and his change of views. Given his personal history and his being prime minister, he had a lot of credibility on the Right. As he made his pirouette from one outlook to another - from opposing unilateral withdrawal to favoring it - a lot of people went with him. Basically, they said to him, "Arik, you understand this more deeply than I, and you see it further than I do, so I'm following you." Can the Arab world democratize? Yes. There's nothing in the Arab DNA that is anti-democratic. Do you see it making such a transformation? Possibly, but it will take a long time. A lot of things have to change. The basic problem is that the Arabic-speaking Muslims have had a great deal of difficulty in coping with modern life, and blame others for their problems. They're not introspective and not productive and constructive in their self-criticism. A notable exception would be the UN's Arab Human Development Report of 2002 - which made one take note. But it's such a wisp in the overall conspiratorial mindset, which requires profound changes taking place. Profound changes in Islam, you mean? Like some kind of reformation? Religious reformation is certainly very important, but changes are also needed outside the religious sphere. A sense of taking responsibility for themselves. An attempt to be introspective, to figure out what the problems are. There are positive examples. The ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Muhammad Bin Rashed Al Maktoum, has recently come out with a book titled My Vision, for instance. He's of note, because he actually achieved something. He stayed away from ideology and built an economic success story. He did this through intelligence and good practices. But such positive elements are few and far between. The Arabic-speaking Muslim world - as the Muslim world as a whole, perhaps even more so - is in a state of anger, denial, fury, extremism and conspiracism that creates problems for the entire world. It's a threat to us all, including to those Muslims who want to live a modern, civilized life. Do you think that they're demographically "a threat to us all?" The Muslim demographic upsurge is striking. But there's every reason to see it as temporary. Europe went through a huge population burst at a point in its development, then had a demographic leveling and is now experiencing collapse. A number of Muslim countries are already going through a demographic decline. And the Muslim population in Europe? That's a different story. European women have an average of something like 1.4 children, when 2.1 is what's necessary for continuity. In other words, one-third of the needed population is never born. That one-third is primarily being replaced by immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries which are nearby, with which there are colonial relationships, or which are particularly eager to get to Europe because of troubles in their own countries. Europeans are not really coming to terms with this phenomenon. They do not bother to figure out how to adapt to their population deficit or to decide which immigrants they want. In December 2002, a month after the Turkish elections, you attended the Herzliya Conference, where you were chided for being pessimistic about the rise to power of the Islamist party. How do things look now in Turkey? Things look bad, especially of late. [Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip] Erdogan is turning out to be a skilled, savvy, cautious politician who is moving to promote the Islamist agenda. Whether it be foreign policy, the judiciary, the role of the military, relations with majority-Muslim states or Turkey's regional standing, the Islamist influence is paramount. The great question about Turkey is whether Erdogan and his colleagues see themselves as countering the Ataturk Revolution - as being the anti-Ataturk cadres - or whether they're willing to work within the Ataturk structure. I can't say for sure that they're revolutionaries, that their goal is to upend the system. But it certainly seems more likely than not, and more so with time. Another one of your projects is Campus Watch. You have been accused of being an academic witch-hunter where the free flow of ideas in the universities is concerned. Campus Watch is specifically concerned with Middle East studies in the United States and Canada, and what we perceive on the basis of Martin Kramer's book, Ivory Towers on Sand, to be the failure of this enterprise. We criticize the substantive work, the extremism and the imposition of political views on students. And we hope that by bringing this to the attention of the general public, two positive results will follow: First, that Middle East specialists will be more cautious; and second, that universities will make sure that there's more intellectual diversity. We've been quite successful in the former, where we see repeatedly specialists being aware of Campus Watch and being more cautious. We have not even begun to have any achievement in the latter area, where appointments are still very much skewed. How have you been successful in the former? By attracting attention to problems with Middle East studies. For example, our work uncovered the wretched excesses of Middle East studies at Columbia University and we initially noted Juan Cole, the professor now much in the public eye because of his possible move to Yale. Do Middle East studies differ from other academic areas in this respect? No. They are perfectly representative of many social science and humanities fields, whether it be Latin American studies or anthropology or English literature. We focus on the Middle East because it has a prominence other areas lack. Take a concept like jihad, which is central to understanding the war on terror, and you hear historians of Islam, religious specialists or others, almost without exception saying that jihad is moral self-improvement - becoming a better colleague; working on behalf of women's rights; working against apartheid. They are generally unwilling to state what it really is, which is warfare that expands Muslim control of land. This is a very important concept, and whom does one turn to for an understanding of it? Not to politicians, not to the media, but to specialists. And they have failed, betrayed their profession, by not being candid as to what this means. This is disinformation and dissimulation. It is what we criticize. When, in his victory speech in January 2005, PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas said the period of the "little jihad has ended, and now the big jihad is beginning," there was much debate in Israel as to the meaning of his statement. Some local Middle East analysts said that "little jihad" was warfare, and that "big jihad" meant internal spiritual ascension. Are you saying they were spreading disinformation? Not in this case. A secondary meaning of the word jihad comes from Sufism and means, in fact, moral self-improvement. But, when used in the public sphere - when Osama bin Laden uses it, or in statements by Islamic Jihad - it normally refers to warfare to extend Muslim control. Do you envision a situation in which there will be a reverse shift - in Israel and elsewhere in the West - from managing conflicts to imposing victory on the enemy? I don't know. Sometimes I'm optimistic and think that the unending failures of not striving for victory will eventually lead someone to figure this out. On the other hand, I see how mistaken policies can go on year after year. Were you optimistic in this way on 9/11? Did you believe it was the event that would "lead someone to figure this out?" Yes, I was, with "united we stand" being the slogan of that period, and with the sense of resolve, the willingness to undo the Taliban regime. The 50-50 division in the United States now between those who understand we are at war and those involved in a glorified police operation was not something I expected. But now, having seen that division, and having seen what happened after the 2004 Madrid train bombings, the 2005 London bombings and other major terrorist incidents, I'm no longer surprised. David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com |
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HAMAS DECIDES, AT LAST, WHERE IT DOES NOT WANT THE CASUALTIES
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 15, 2006. |
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Here is an Associated Press article that gives us Hamas' answer to the question: where do you want the casualties? After severe reprisals which killed innocents (not at the beach, but at an Israeli helicopter attack on a terrorist car carrying weapons and explosives in Gaza), and the threat of more reprisals even though such reprisals may kill more innocents, Hamas has stopped the rocket/Qassam/Qatyusha attacks. We learn from this several things: a. Since Hamas can and does stop the attacks now, Hamas could have stopped the attacks any time earlier, but chose not too. As the governing force in power in the PA, Hamas is therefore responsible for the attacks and thus has NOT upheld the cease fire of February, 2005. b. Hamas and other terrorist groups intentionally place their rockets and crews in or near civilian implacements, knowing that Israel is to some degree impeded in retaliation because of Israel's commitment to avoid civilian casualties.....and because of all the bad press like what Israel just got for the deaths on the Gaza beach (even though there may not have been caused by Israel). Therefore, even if it were (it was not, but even if it were) Israeli fire that killed the civilians on the Gaza beach, Hamas still shoulders the onus of culpability per international law and western morality. c. the Israeli artillery and naval attacks are in response to, and are attempts to prevent future, qassam/mortar/qatyusha attacks. They are aimed at the terrorist perpetrators. The Hamas qassam/mortar/qatyusha attacks are aimed at civilians. Although, by sheer luck, they have not been successful in causing massive casualties (as would have been caused had a qassam rocket landed only two minutes later on a classroom in Sederoth -- the kids were still in the school's synagogue at prayer when the qassam hit the empty classroom), these endless barrages (as many as 80 in one day) almost daily for more than a year are an aggression and threat which clearly qualify as 'casus belli' - cause for war: i.e., a military response is legal per international law. d. clearly, the israeli response has been effective. Hamas is now reversing its stand and taking measures to stop the rocket attacks. So the killing of civilians in the context of israel's retaliation agianst the hamas attacks is tragic, but it results in the saving of lives, both civilian and military, on the Israeli side. So now both sides have decided where they want the casualties....and where they don't. It is beyond tragic, and certainly criminal, that hamas decides to stop its attacks only when it is taught that the cost of those attacks is too high. It is tragic that Palestinian civilians must die in the process of stopping hamas terrorists from perpetrataing their terror. But what choice has any country ever made, in the entire history of the world, when its civilians are threatened with endless relentless brutal lethal terrorism aimed purposely at maximum civilian casualties? |
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Hamas militants stopped rocket fire after Israeli threats
Hamas militants stopped in recent days firing rockets from the Gaza Strip toward Israel after Israel made threats to the group, Israeli officials said Thursday. The comments by Maj. Gen. Amos Gilad, a senior official in the Defense Ministry, and other Israeli officials signified that Israel and Hamas -- which rules the Palestinian government -- were stepping back from an escalation in fighting that began last week after eight Palestinian civilians were killed on a Gaza beach in a blast Palestinians blamed on Israel. "We sent clear messages ... and at the end the firing of the rockets stopped," Gilad told Army Radio. He did not say how the messages had been sent. In response to Hamas calls earlier this week to escalate attacks, Israeli officials had suggested that Israel would strike at Hamas leaders involved in violence, even naming Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh as a possible target. But Israel had estimated that Haniyeh had not yet given direct orders for attacks against Israel, so he was not yet a target, officials said. Israel Radio reported Thursday that a Hamas leader living in Syria, Khaled Mashaal, and Haniyeh had ordered a stop to the rocket fire. In response to the report, Israeli lawmaker Tzahi Hanegbi told the radio that, Israel would avoid targeting Hamas members in response to group's decision to stop attacks. "If Israel will see that there is something to this new policy, of course the reaction will be accordingly," Hanegbi said. Hanegbi, the chairman of the influential parliamentary Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee was among those Israeli officials who said earlier this week that Haniyeh himself could be targeted. Israel has in recent weeks carried out several deadly air strikes against Palestinian militants it believes are involved in rocket attacks. The rocket fire had increased at the start of this week, with Hamas involvement, following the Gaza beach explosion last week. In recent days, the number of rockets fired has dropped considerably. Hamas rules the Palestinian Authority after winning elections in January. The group's military wing has killed more than 250 Israelis in attacks in almost six years of but had largely kept a truce declared in February 2005 until it began last month engaging in rocket attacks against Israel. David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com |
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PLAN A COMMEMORATIVE EVENT FOR GUSH KATIF IN YOUR COMMUNITY
Posted by Helen Freeman, June 15, 2006. |
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Dear Community leaders and friends, As you may know, The Committee of Gush Katif, encompassing members from all of the 21 dispersed communities in the Gush, has designated Tuesday, August 1, as a memorial day to remember the past and look to the future. The emphasis will be on the humanitarian issues now facing the refugees; however, we understand that reference must be made to the political decisions that created the problem(s) and that are now threatening communities in Judea and Samaria, exacerbating the dangers to Israel and indeed, all of western civilization. There are concerned supporters who have already indicated their desire to spearhead daytime "street theater" events that will be dramatic and will succeed in catching press attention. Others wish to concentrate on an extensive email fund-raising campaign. There are communities that will concentrate on placing ads in newspapers on August 1, and others that will run events in synagogues and schools and camps, with speakers and videos, emphasizing the humanitarian issues created by the expulsion. The Gush Katif Committee is preparing educational KITS that will provide needed materials for the commemoration. These will be available in mid-July. Please consider planning an event in your community. We leave it to you to decide what would work best in your particular area. We will publicize all the activities that will be taking place throughout the country - and indeed the world - for this world-wide day of remembrance. Please make your event part of this large plan. Please contact me, or Dror Vanunu and Laurence Beziz at gkatif@netvision.net.il. Thank you so much for giving this your best effort. Helen Freedman
Helen Freedman is with Americans For a Safe Israel/AFSI, a pro-active pro-Israel advocacy group. AFSI may be contacted by mail at 1623 Third Ave., Suite 205, New York, N.Y. 10128 (Tel: 212-828-2424; Fax: 212-828-1717); by email at afsi@rcn.com; or by accessing its website: www.afsi.org. |
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PEACE PLAN OR PUBLIC RELATIONS' GIMMICK?
Posted by Barry Rubin, June 15, 2006. |
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A careful and balanced evaluation of Mahmud Abbas's new strategy is tremendously important. While in some respects it represents a step forward, it is also couched in the tricky double meanings Palestinian political groups have used to conceal their continuing goal of total victory in eliminating Israel. Moreover, nothing is likely to come out of it. There are four important loopholes in the proposal: First, its main purpose was not to recognize Israel but to outmaneuver Hamas in terms of domestic politics. Abbas's terms were that the referendum would go ahead only if Hamas did not reach agreement with Fatah. Moreover, of course, the main goals are to promote Palestinian unity and make international public relations' gains. Second, the plan very consciously leaves open the idea that gaining an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and east Jerusalem is only the first stage in wiping Israel off the map. Third, the priority given to the demand for a "right of return" as a condition of equal importance to gaining a state reveals the preceding point. The invocation of UN Security Council resolution 194 as a basis for this claim (a half-century-old, non-binding resolution intended to give instructions to a long-forgotten peace commission, which the Palestinians rejected) should be a joke that promotes laughter. But the intention is to flood Israel with Palestinians set on its destruction. The problem is not just that this idea is never going to get Israel's agreement but also it continues to signal to Palestinians that they seek something far more than a homeland of their own alongside Israel. In Abbas's words, resolution 194 "is even more valuable than Resolution 242," a UN measure--it is often forgotten--that the PLO opposed at the time because that organization warned it would permit border changes. Abbas specifically rejected anything less than every inch of the territories ruled before 1967 by Egypt and Jordan. Fourth, the program justifies terrorism, albeit only in the territories captured in 1967 by Israel. The idea that the Palestinian Authority (PA) would explicitly advocate violence (it has been doing so in practice, of course, for a dozen years) makes a mockery of any possibility of it living up to the Road Map or being a partner for peace. Further, even if the referendum did pass, the PA security forces would not lift a finger to stop terrorist attacks on Israel. Finally, the referendum will probably never be held, though Abbas has picked July 31 and says he will give a "presidential order" to do so. But only the Hamas-dominated PA can organize it and will certainly refuse. The positive aspect, which should not be overstated, is that this plan can begin a long-term reeducation of Palestinians to accept a real two-state solution. But it does so much less than the minimum for having a major effect in that direction. Both aspects can be seen in the way Abbas defined his view: "There is a general national consensus, from Hamas to the Communist Party, that we want a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders.... This is what we can do right now, this is what we are offered right now, and we are not talking about dreams in hazy terms.... We want an independent state with [territorial] contiguity in which it is possible to live, within the 1967 borders. We want to end the occupation...." This is a good pragmatic formulation--though we know what Hamas and most of Fatah wants to do with such a state--along the lines of: let's get something real instead of fighting forever to get everything. It is to Abbas's credit that he understands this reality and speaks about it. Yet the other factors involved undercut this message, including the fact that most of Fatah's leadership continues to be more radical and not that different from Hamas, except for opposing the Islamicization of Palestinian society. Maybe this is the best Abbas could do at this point. But if in the year 2006 their leaders still cannot go beyond this kind of language, that in itself is quite devastating in terms of the ability of Palestinians--who just voted overwhelmingly for Hamas and for Fatah hardliners--to make peace. An interesting piece of evidence on these issues is a Birzeit
university poll:
The critical question was when those polled were asked to choose between Hamas rejecting recognizing Israel or its recognizing Israel and thus receiving "funding from the international community." This is the sole question raising the recognition issue. Notice it was posed in a way to maximize the latter response, that is, on the basis of direct financial benefit for those answering. Nevertheless, almost two-thirds opposed Hamas recognizing Israel (61 to 31 percent). In other words, it seems a large majority of Palestinians support the plan--which they see as a way of promoting national unity and stopping chaotic Hamas-Fatah fighting--and also oppose recognition of Israel or even a real two-state solution. On other questions, generally not reported in the media, strong support for Hamas is shown. While 63 percent say their family income has declined, the performance of Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh is rated higher than that of Abbas (57 to 48 percent). And while about equal numbers say they would vote for Hamas and Fatah, 21.5 percent--most of them probably Hamas voters--say they are undecided. It can be argued that Hamas has lost some unpopularity but far less than many would expect. Waging this partisan battle, Abbas wants to consolidate Fatah popular support, stop the fighting with Hamas, force Hamas back into being Fatah's junior partner, gain more international support through a public relations campaign, and end the international sanctions against the PA. Actually making peace with Israel is very far down that list of priorities and successfully doing so is blocked by all his other domestic political considerations. Barry Rubin is Director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, Interdisciplinary Center university. His co-authored book, Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography, (Oxford University Press) is now available in paperback and in Hebrew. His latest book, The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East, was published by Wiley in September. Prof. Rubin's columns can now be read online at: http://gloria.idc.ac.il/columns/column.html. |
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NEW OLMERT-PERETZ POLICY - SEND NEW ARMS TO TERRORISTS
Posted by Steven Plaut, June 15, 2006. |
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1. Speechless I wish I could tell you this is just another Plaut spoof. But I am afraid this is for real! The banner headline in Yediot Ahronot, Israel's leading daiy, today (June 15, 06): Israel Transferred Rifles to The Palestinians Three trucks with 950 American M-16 automatic rifles arrived from Jordan and were allowed to be shipped into Ramallah and Gaza, in convoys protected by the Israeli army. The new Israeli policy of the Olmert government is to provide rifles to Palestinian murderers that will now be used to murder Jewish children and other civilians. 3. "Turn Left at the Presbyterian Church (to anti-Semitism)" http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115033656216580816.html by Jim Roberts BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- A growing number of Presbyterians are engaged in a battle for the future of the Presbyterian Church (USA). Over the past two years, this denomination -- my denomination -- has taken a turn toward radicalism that threatens to tarnish a once-proud institution. At issue is the Presbyterian Church's decision in 2004 "to initiate a process of phased, selective divestment in multinational corporations operating in Israel." The fallout was immediate, painful and damaging. Not only are a handful of church leaders taking positions that are highly unpopular in the pews, they are doing so with heavy-handed, top-down measures, actions that run contrary to long-honored traditions. Not surprisingly, the church is experiencing problems with declining membership and dwindling financial support -- due in large part to widespread frustration over the direction the leadership has taken. Instead of developing policies to unite us, the leadership is sowing seeds for further defections by large numbers. My denomination, once revered as an icon of socially progressive thinking, is now tainted by perceptions of anti-Semitism and naive support of Islamic terrorists. The Presbyterian bureaucracy seems unwilling to confront difficult problems in Africa and the Middle East that do not fit its hard-line, pro-Palestinian political viewpoint. Interfaith relations with Jewish friends are also in shambles after decades of efforts by Presbyterians to reach out and create healthy working relationships based on mutual respect. * * * How did the church fall so far so fast? In June 2004, with scant attention and without fair debate, the leadership foisted a divestment resolution on an unsuspecting church. While the action was likened to similar divestment from South Africa under apartheid in the 1980s, attempts to draw analogies between that country then and Israel now are factually indefensible. Only a few months later in the fall of 2004, senior church leaders were among a contingent that met with Hezbollah in Lebanon and praised them -- the same international terrorist organization that has killed thousands, including Americans, without remorse over several decades, and that receives major funding from Iran. The church also funds fiercely pro-Palestinian committees, sends representatives to Palestinian advocacy conferences, and has written obsequious congratulatory letters to the terrorist leaders of Hamas on their recent election victory. Simultaneously, the church remains remarkably docile on profoundly serious issues such as genocide in Darfur, the Iranian nuclear buildup and mistreatment of Christians in communist and Muslim countries. Presbyterian delegates also take leadership roles in organizations that blame the U.S. and capitalism in general for most of the world's catastrophes. The 2004 manifesto of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, for instance, went on about America's "imperialism," "domination" and "massive threats to life." And the Presbyterian Church's 2004 Stony Point Declaration was a similar self-parody, noting that "our nation . . . pursues global empire, backed by unprecedented military supremacy. Its un-qualified commitment to economic growth through a global, capitalist economic system has not served God's purposes of justice, peace, community and the integrity of creation, but has enriched the corporate ruling class . . . [creating] monstrous inequality and massive suffering." Instead of admitting in 2006 that the Middle East has changed dramatically since 2004 -- the rise of a land-for-peace consensus in Israel, the election of Hamas to the Palestinian government, and the equally (if not more) disastrous election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran -- the Presbyterian Church clings stubbornly to flawed policies that are now all the more embarrassing. Some leaders continued as late as a few months ago to attend world-wide church meetings to encourage divestment among other churches. This they attempt while simultaneously downplaying and trying to isolate a groundswell of objections within our own church. What the leadership now faces are nearly two dozen formal requests from regional Presbyteries across America to change or terminate our divestment policy. At the very least, a large majority agrees that we need to abandon divestment as a hostile action against Israel in favor of "investment" in Israeli and Palestinian groups that are working as bridge-builders for peace. Most people also agree that, with Hamas now in power in the Palestinian territories, Presbyterians need to clearly and unequivocally denounce Hamas's longstanding call for the destruction of Israel in its charter, and to demand that Hamas stop its many hateful indoctrination practices against Jewish people. Key Presbyterian church leaders, however, are balking at considering such necessary action. Many now have a huge personal and professional investment in the Palestinian political agenda and the cause of divestment from Israel. Some leaders seem to savor the global attention such advocacy has brought them. They cannot admit that they have politicized our church in ways that prevent healing and salvation. Today, we Presbyterians begin our national General Assembly in Birmingham, Ala. The problem is that the leadership appears to be working overtime to come up with parliamentary and other maneuvers to stop the anti-divestment movement. At the 11th hour, for example, the worried leadership proposed that a new task force be created to "study" the divestment "option." The plan would populate the task force with supporters of divestment and would preserve divestment momentum while the task force works through the summer of 2008. This helplessly transparent scheme, if adopted by General Assembly, would override the overtures from Presbyterians, putting them on hold and delaying a clear up-or-down vote on divestment for at least another two years. It would, however, allow other denominations to continue to cite the 2004 divestment resolution as justification for their own actions. With such efforts, the church leadership hopes to preserve their stature -- along with their failed vision for the church. The vast majority of Presbyterians long for our church to return to its core purpose: to help nourish a closer relationship with our Savior. Instead, the leadership is forcing many of us to spend countless hours trying to rescue the church from those who hew to terrorist liberation politics. Those of us who oppose divestment are not unqualified supporters of Israel nor insensitive to the plight of Palestinians. We believe that this country and our church need a wise and well-funded program to provide more aid to those suffering in the Palestinian territories, Darfur and elsewhere. However, the problems these societies are facing cannot be blamed on democracy, capitalism or even current Israeli policies. They suffer most from the excesses created by their own preachers of hate and generations of corrupt and dysfunctional leadership. This year, Presbyterian commissioners voting at General Assembly can steer the Presbyterian ship back on a prudent path, which begins with reversing the divestment course charted two years ago. Mr. Roberts is chairman of the Committee to End Divestment Now. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist,
a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author
of "The Scout." He frequently comments -- both seriously and
satirically -- on Israeli politics and the left wing academic
community. His website address is
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HOW HAMAS DEPICTS ITS MONEY TROUBLE;
WHAT IS RACISM, WHAT IS SELF-DEFENSE; IMMIGRATION LAXITY IN EUROPE
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 15, 2006. |
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HOW HAMAS DEPICTS ITS FINANCIAL SIEGE The Hamas regime in the P.A. depicts previous international donations and the boycott of Hamas as political extortion. That it is, but is it justified? The previous donations were put as humanitarian, but I think they represented approval of what the Arabs misinformed them was their goal against Israel. They portrayed their goal as national liberation for themselves. Actually it was religious enslavement of the Jews, while the Arabs remain under totalitarian rule. The Hamas regime admitted openly what the PLO regime did not admit openly, that it was disregarding its peace agreements, seeking war, approving of all means including terrorism, and wanting to overthrow not just Israeli rule in the Territories but in the State of Israel. It admitted, like the PLO Covenant that the PLO finds it politic not to remind the West of, that the capture of the Territories was but a phase in the conquest of Israel. I've been emphasizing the irrelevance of the armistice line as a boundary between the State of Israel and the Territories, from the Jewish point of view. It is equally irrelevant from the Arab point of view. After all, those Arabs don't come just from the Territories, but from the whole region. There is no nationality based in the Territories. The armistice line is a chance situating of military positions at the end of battle. It has no national or strategic significance, though the Territories are strategically vital for Israeli defense. The Green Line armistice line is an artificial division. CIVILIZATION STUMBLING. WILL IT FALL? Islam is like bacteria in that the latter produce disease in weakened organisms. That is how the imperialistic desert religion gained its initial empire, preying upon the exhausted Persian and Roman ones. Now it takes advantage of a decline of the West. If the West kept its economy and pride in its civilization intact, it would not need heavy immigration and it would repel the Muslim immigration of hostiles. If it were a more thinking and courageous society, it would recognize the Muslim immigration as hostile. What is weakening the West? Liberalism, that once seemed the answer, has gone to a non-intellectual extreme, and is undermining it. All over the West, pension programs immediately paid retirees with funds deducted from remaining workers. In the West, too few workers remain to pay in full. Nor is business as good as it might be, thanks to Asian competition. Why so few workers? Birth control gone too far, as folks switch from native religion to hedonism, and have no known values to defend. Political correctness propagandizes them to think that their own civilization is evil, and keeps them from hearing how evil Islamic society is. Under present trends, Islam will take over a globally warmed world. CHANGE IN THE GULF STATES The Gulf States have been switching their language of instruction for higher education to English. Some citizens complain that the student body has not been prepared with proficiency in English. Their education would be deficient (IMRA, 5/29). The change may open Gulf Arabs to new ideas to have contempt for. ISRAELI BUREAUCRACY Israel still has not taken care of most of its citizens whom it uprooted from Gaza. They observed that when the government waS expelling them, all governmental agencies involved worked in synchronization and unimpeded by bureaucracy. Rehabilitation, however, is mired in bureaucracy (Arutz-7, 5/29). WHAT IS RACISM & WHAT IS SELF-DEFENSE? Israel will deport a naturalized British citizen born in Pakistan. He admitted transferring funds illegally to Hamas. Police found 'photographs of swastikas superimposed on IDF symbols, of senior Nazi German officials, of Osama Bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, as well as many photographs of Hamas military activities." (IMRA, 5/29). Why not imprison him? MK Avigdor Lieberman remarked, during the new regime's swearing in, "At the end of World War II, not only the convicted criminals were executed at the Nuremberg Trials, but also their accomplices. I hope that this will be the fate of the collaborators in this house as well... There are terrorism laws, according to which all those who collaborate with terrorism must also be put to trial." MK Ben-Sasson proposed to bar MK Lieberman from speaking in Knesset, on the grounds that that speech was racist. The proposal was laughed off as an absurd attempt to silence the opposition (Arutz-7, 5/29). "Racist!" is a taunt meant to intimidate. Debate in Knesset has been raucous. Decorum was lacking. People make inappropriate comparisons to the Nazis, which hurt feelings without enlightening anyone. The Arabs make seditious remarks and the Far Leftists make treasonous remarks, without penalty. The Left has a dangerous tendency to repress opponents, with righteous indignation, although the Left is far more abusive. This is such a case. Recent Israeli regimes have been kowtowing to the anti-Zionist State Dept. and have been appeasing the Arabs. The Arabs are followers of the Nazis. They avidly read Hitler's Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. They have adopted the racial attitude of the Nazis towards Jews, and preach their murder. They officially wish to conquer Israel. The regime's appeasement of the Arabs is bringing the country down. Indignation should be heaped upon them. Their likening to collaborators with the Nazis fits. MK Lieberman was fair. Trials for the treasonous Left and seditious Arabs are overdue. The left doesn't know what racism is. PRESBYTERIANS AGAINST DIVESTMENT The Presbyterian Church's sudden approval of divestment from Israel aroused opposition within the Church. Some Church leaders just finished a fact-finding mission to Israel. They want to rescind the divestment program (IMRA, 5/29). ABBAS' REACTION TO ISRAELI-COUNTER-ATTACKS Israel recently killed four members of a rocket crew firing missiles at Israeli cities. Abbas praised the deceased. His spokesman lambasted Israel's preventive counter-attack as barbaric. This has been his media's pattern. Some "moderate!" (IMRA, 5/30.) UNTHINKING IMMIGRATION LAXITY IN EUROPE Europe was proud of its multi-culturalism. It passed permissive immigration laws without thought about what would happen if the Muslim sector grew without integrating. Europe no longer is prepared for cultural conflict, so it appeases the Muslims. Europeans are afraid that if they interfere with sexist Muslim marriage codes or forbid female circumcision, more Muslims would become active in the conflict. The effect is that the Muslims thumb their noses and slap the Europeans, who avert their eyes and turn their cheeks. Thus the Allahu akhbar-yelling youths who rioted in 300 French towns were called social outcasts rather than Muslims. (They probably are both.) Another reaction by the no longer fervently Christian Europe is to pass a law against blasphemy. (It probably would be used to stifle legitimate scholarly and political criticism of Islam and of the jihadists.) Inhibiting European counter-attack is its anti-Americanism, since the US is leading what counter-attacking there is. This animosity goes far back. European intellectuals rejoiced in Vietnam at the Communist victory there over the US. Contemporary intellectuals hope that the US campaign against Islamo-fascism ends likewise. Ordinary Europeans have a more realistic assessment of what the Islamists want and the necessity for the US to stop them. (But how much influence do the people have in democracies?) Oriana Fallaci tries to alert Europeans, but the intellectuals and journalists try to repress her. They take the side of the enemy. Their treason is suicidal (David Pryce-Jones, Commentary, 6/2006, p.78). SAUDIS CONTINUE BOYCOTT OF ISRAEL In return for entry into the World Trade Organization, S. Arabia promised the US it would end its trade boycott of Israel. Saudi officials assure the US it has ended it, and US officials assure Congress. But it still has not ended, as telephone calls to Saudi trade officials confirmed. S. Arabia works within the Arab League to intensify the boycott (IMRA, 5/30). The Saudis make false promises in order to get US jets, too. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
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FLOWING
Posted by Anita Tucker, June 15, 2006. |
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Yesterday the first 12 families of the Netzer Hazani-Ein Tzurim community received their containers that were finally moved here after ten months of storage in the ZIm-Kastina storage lot and from other storage locations. Last night many opened their containers to reunite with their pre-expulsion lifetime belongings. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow they will be emptying as much of the belongings as possible into the temporary caravans (caravillas) (though repairs not yet completed - but promises intact). The remainder will have to be replaced in storage. Two of my sons and their families are among those emptying their containers. My husband and I are not among these 12 families so I now have the important job of babysitting for grandchildren. They are, of course, the great comfort in this happy-sad day. This morning I am be watching my 10 month old Ori (our light in this darkness, bli ayin hara) born two weeks after the expulsion So far I have already heard of a long list of appliances and furniture that have been damaged but it seems that none of these 12 Netzer Hazani families have energy to get to upset about this and as long as the appliance is still functional they are moving them in and just saying "Thank God it isn't worse." Most are just delighted to be reunited with their long lost "friends" that help make a house a home. Just moving forward-flowing with Hakadosh Baruch Hu -- saying Baruch Hashem for what we have is the main agenda today. All are longingly awaiting those even better times He has promised us.. Thanks for your caring, caring gives strength, anita Anyone passing through near Ein Tzurim is welcome to visit and again remind these families that they are not alone. Your chizuk is welcome. anita Anita Tucker is a farmer. She and her family were evicted from their home in Gush Katif last August by the Sharon government. |
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THE INVISIBLE MAN AND THE SQUEAKY WHEEL
Posted by Justice FOr Jonathan Pollard, June 15, 2006. |
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This article was written by David Potter and it appeared on IsraelInsider yesterday. David Potter is a veteran paratrooper of the 82nd Airborne Division and served through two enlistments, including the war in Grenada, |
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If it were up to me - I would say let him go. The man has paid the price for his actions. He has done his time. The United States doesn't do anything because the government of Israel doesn't do anything. It's like the old saying - "the squeaky wheel gets the grease." Israel isn't squeaking enough. And until it does? Jonathan Pollard won't even be on the radar at the State Department. Not even close. He will be invisible; lost in the system. By all rights, he might as well be the invisible man. The State Department doesn't see him. The government of Israel can only see him when it is convenient for them to do so; but he disappears again, at the slightest inkling of "pressure" from the United States. That's a code word for "blame it on the Americans, Uncle Sam will take the rap." It's used every time the Israeli government wants to get out of doing something. And it covers a variety of sins -- from not giving back AUV's Israel borrowed from China -- to evicting settlers. Jonathan Pollard just happens to be one of the things this excuse has been used on. Maybe they don't want him back. Maybe Pollard had some embarrassing secrets that Israeli government officials want to hide. Or maybe the secret is that there is no secret. They simply don't care. Likely as not, Pollard supporters don't have enough votes in Israel for Israeli politicians to be concerend. So he is not on their radar either. But until he is on somebody's radar -- at least at the political level - Jonathan Pollard is condemned to rot away in prison for the rest of his life. The walls that surround him will continue to be the boundaries of his little world; the very existance of which, is marked by borders of concrete and steel. He will continue to be . . . the invisible man. But time is a boundary also, as real and concrete as the walls of any prison. It is the one constraint that confines us all, as we each mark the days of our lives. It is the one thing we all have too little of. And time is running out for Jonathan Pollard. It's running out for all of us. It's the one thing we can never get back again. And like it or not, we are all going to grow old and die. Prison is no place to leave your ghost. And neither is it a place to leave Jonathan Pollard. Contact Justice For Jonathan Pollard at Justice4JP@aol.com |
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SOME OF ISRAEL'S ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Posted by May Leiner, June 14, 2006. |
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This comes from Gerardo Joffe, President of FLAME (Facts and Logic About the Middle East), P.O. Box 590359, San Francisco, CA 94159 |
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Some of Israel's Accomplishments: Israel is without question the most amazing, the most admirable country the world has ever seen. Despite its only being a little more than fifty years old, despite a population of just over five million, despite having to be at war footing for almost its entire life, despite having absorbed more immigrants in relation to its population that any country in history, its accomplishments in almost any area of human activity are unsurpassed. Have a look at the partial list of accomplishments that follows and be proud to be a fellow-Jew or even more if you have made any contribution at all -- even if only by contributing financially to organizations that support Israel, such as FLAME. And consider what Israel could have accomplished and could still accomplish if its enemies would not single-mindedly wish to destroy it and if Israel could apply all of its genius to peaceful pursuits. 1. The cell phone was developed in Israel by Israelis working in the Israeli branch of Motorola, which has its largest development center in Israel. 2. Most of the Windows NT and XP operating systems were developed by Microsoft-Israel. 3. The Pentium MMX Chip technology was designed in Israel at Intel. Both the Pentium-4 microprocessor and the Centrino processor were entirely designed, developed, and produced in Israel. 4. The Pentium microprocessor in your computer was most likely made in Israel. 5. Voice mail technology was developed in Israel. 6. Both Microsoft and Cisco built their only R&D facilities outside the US in Israel. 7. The technology for the AOL Instant Messenger ICQ was developed in 1996 by four young Israelis. 8. According to industry officials, Israel designed the airline industry's most impenetrable flight security. US officials now look to Israel for advice on how to handle airborne security threats. 9. Israel's $100 billion economy is larger than all of its immediate neighbors combined. 10. Israel has the highest percentage in the world of home computers per capita. 11. Israel has the highest ratio of university degrees to the population in the world. 12. Israel produces more scientific papers per capita than any other nation by a large margin -- 109 per 10,000 people -- as well as one of the highest per capita rates of patents filed. 13. In proportion to its population, Israel has the largest number of startup companies in the world. In absolute terms, Israel has the second largest number of startup companies after the US (3,500 companies mostly in hi-tech). 14. With more than 3,000 high-tech companies and startups, Israel has the highest concentration hi-tech companies in the world -- apart from the Silicon Valley, US. 15. Israel is ranked #2 in the world for venture capital funds right behind the US. 16. After the United States and Canada, Israel has the largest number of NASDAQ listed companies. 17. Israel has the highest average living standards in the Middle East. The per capita income in 2000 was over $17,500, exceeding that of the UK. 18. On a per capita basis, Israel has the largest number of biotech startups. 19. Twenty-four percent of Israel's workforce hold university degrees -- ranking it third in the industrialized world, after the United States and Holland -- and 12% hold advanced degrees. 20. Israel is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East. 21. In 1984 and 1991, Israel airlifted a total of 22,000 Ethiopian Jews at risk in Ethiopia to safety in Israel. 22. When Golda Meir was elected Prime Minister of Israel in 1969, she became the world's second elected female leader in modern times. 23. When the US Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, was bombed in 1998, Israeli rescue teams were on the scene within a day -- and saved three victims from the rubble. 24. Israel has the third highest rate of entrepreneurship -- and the highest rate among women and among people over 55 -- in the world. 25. Relative to its population, Israel is the largest immigrant-absorbing nation on earth. Immigrants come in search of democracy, religious freedom, and economic opportunity. 26. Israel was the first nation in the world to adopt the Kimberly process, an international standard that certifies diamonds as "conflict free." 27. Israel has the world's second highest per capita rate of publishing new books. 28. Israel is the only country in the world that entered the 21st century with a net gain in its number of trees, made more remarkable because this was achieved in an area considered mainly desert. 29. Israel has more museums per capita than any other country. 30. In the field of medicine, Israeli scientists developed the first fully computerized, no-radiation diagnostic instrumentation for breast cancer. 31. An Israeli company developed a computerized system for ensuring proper administration of medications, thus removing human error from medical treatment. Every year in US hospitals 7,000 patients die from treatment mistakes. 32. Israel's Givun Imaging developed the first ingestible video camera, so small it fits inside a pill. Used to view the small intestine from the inside, the camera helps doctors diagnose cancer and digestive disorders. 33. Researchers in Israel developed a new device that directly helps the heart pump blood, an innovation with the potential to save lives among those with heart failure. The new device is synchronized with the heart's mechanical operations through a sophisticated system of sensors. 34. Israel leads the world in the number of scientists and technicians in the workforce, with 145 per 10,000, as opposed to 85 in the US, over 70 in Japan, and fewer than 60 in Germany. With over 25% of its work force employed in technical professions, Israel places first in this category as well. 35. A new acne treatment developed in Israel, the ClearLight device, produces a high-intensity, ultraviolet-light-free, narrow-band blue light that causes acne bacteria to self-destruct -- all without damaging surroundings skin or tissue. 36. An Israeli company was the first to develop and install a large-scale solar-powered and fully functional electricity generating plant (in southern California's Mojave desert). Contact May Leiner at MayLeiner@cs.com |
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THE TRAIN TRAGEDY IN BEIT YEHUSHUA AND THE UNPREDICTABILITY OF LIFE
Posted by Rachel Kapen, June 14, 2006. |
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When I read with much sadness and great empathy the grim detais of the train accident which occurred in the Beit Yehushua station, I couldn't but think of the unpredictability of our lives whether it be in Israel or any anywhere else. For it was two summers ago when I took the very same train from Tel Aviv to the Beit Yehoshua station where my cousin Avrema'le picked me up for my visit with his family in the neighboring moshav of Kfar Neter, both south of Netania. I know both moshavim very well being that my late uncle Arieh, who died a year ago at a little over 100, used to deliver the mail as well as the newspapers with his horse and wagon for many years and when he no longer had a horse in his depleted farm he used his bicycle. However, in his younger years he used to be the milkmen in these two moshavim and many a time, in our summer visits to the moshav, my sister and I used to go along with him and thus we came to know almost all the inhabitants of the twin moshavim, Beit Yehoshua and Kfar Neter. During his current visit to the land, my son Udi and his family are planning to take the same train and be picked up by cousin Avrema'le as I was two summers ago. Should he be afraid in light of what happened? Certainly not. Unfortunately, though, in a country where suicide bombings and more recently almost daily Kassam bombardments are a way of life, road accidents claim no less precious human lives. Still, life goes on. As Israelis say: ein brairah, no choice, and as the Chassidic song goes: "The entire world is a very narrow bridge and the main thing is not to be afraid at all". Contact Rachel Kapen at skapen285466MI@concast.net |
| "BOMBS NOT BREAD"
Posted by Evelyn Hayes, June 14, 2006. |
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It was just this week reported [BBC, June 14] that tens of thousands of televisions were delivered by trucks to the Arabs in Gaza. Instead of food, instruments to further install brain hate were imported. BBC reports that the Arab children will suffer because of Israel. How dare they not consider it's because of Hamas, Fatah, Kadima, Condoleezza Rice and BBC? BBC ignores what is going on and the cause of the real suffering. Many Arab households were employed by the Jews of Gush Katif. The deserted desert area reclaimed by the Jews after the 19 years of exile under Egyptian occupation was flourishing beyond the imagination. The Bedouin tents lined the road and the export from the green houses exceeded $100,000,000 and was growing. Kadima destroyed what it should have bought or sold for $1,000,000,000 or more considering that 10X earnings was below the forecast of productivity. Instead of offering to make Arab Gaza like Gush Katif, Gush Katif was destroyed and the Jews expelled from Arab lands were refugees again, still living in hovels and tents without their lifework. Al Jezera Gaza was extended to explode further into Israel and incite more world terrorism. BBC ignores that the productive greenhouse industry bought for a pittance from the Jews was left for Jihad, but it was ransacked and made into bomb factories to destroy the Jews in a genocidal suicidal war as predicted. The Jews of Gush Katif lost their homes in this mad, rushed and ruthless "die"-lateral dis-engagement from anything normal, no matter the prognosis. The results are beyond the forecast and BBC goes on as if the Jews did it. Kadima did appease as they did in Oslo, sacrificing Jews so Jihad could wage terrorism freely. They are also sacrificing those Arabs who are not Jihad ala Saddam Hussein, Arafat al Husseini the Egyptian Palestinian and companies with all the names to divert all the claims of attacks on Jews. This is the cause of Arab frustration and suffering as well as Jew murdering, maiming and criminally mismanaging. Imported mercenary murderers are in the business of war in Britain, France, Canada, Pakistan and the land that was once Israel, renamed Palestine and now Jordan (78% of the Mandate for the Jewish State in Palestine, once the Ottoman Empire) and Israel (Israel is 22% of its original legal mandate because of a unilateral, illegal deal by the British). Over 150,000 terrorists rushed the border at the Rafah Crossing that Condoleezza Rice pushed to open without concern for the area and the warnings, without any control and prper planning, another rush to disaster. Thinking would have given time to examine the evil wrongs. Geraniums and tomatoes were turned into guns and torrents of rockets in a rush to replace Jews with Jihad. Production business was replaced with destruction business aimed daily at the Jews. Hamas/Islamic Jihad/Fatah hit a yishuv in the Negev desert but landed on a chicken coop burning 30 chickens alive. They landed on a high school as the prayer session lasted a little longer and the students hadn't entered the room. They just missed the Minister of Defense's house. And the rockets are targeting the Negev, Yad Mordechai, Ashkelon and Israel daily. They are rockets, Katushkas, not fireworks! And they aim to kill Jews again as BBC and Ehud Olmert's daughter blame the Jews with the most conscientious army in the world. A young handsome loving IDF soldier who wanted to be an actor gave his last piece of food to a frightened Arab child caught in the gun fire in Jenin 2002 where dead bodies and live people were wired to kill. As the evil Hamas/Fatah/Al Asqa/AlQaida chose bombs and not bread, BBC is not a force for media intervention and prevention. It is part of the hate-fest which is now a world war infestation. Do you really think Hamas cares about its children when they are spending more on weapons than the whole world? Do you think Ehud Olmert really thinks peace when he gives weapons to Abu Mazen Holocaust denier; such liars and murderers would be prosecuted all over the world but not when they attack the Jews and choose bombs instead of bread. As Kadima's PM Ehud Olmert tries to silence the Jews threatened by the very same Iran which is arming Hizballah and Hamas, there is death for everyone. A more wild west bank is planned by Olmert and Kadima in Jew ridding Jews and implanting Jihad to unsettle the area more notwithstanding the results of the Gush Katif die-lateralism, opening the gates for the rockets to reach the Negev and Ashkelon and infiltrate Ramallah, Jenin and Nablus while the northern border infiltrated with Syrians in Lebanon is joining in the flare-up. Replacing the Jews of Biblical Israel is not the answer to the rectification of the problem. Remove the terrorists not the moral and settled. Stop their paychecks and send them back to their countries of origin. Stop those shipping arms for war. Bible Believing Jews are not the obstacle to peace. Those who invest in war and warlords and those on their pay rolls and say rolls are the impetus to accelerating another war against the Jews, the West and all dhimmis. When the bombers are stopped there will be breadwinners. Contact Evelyn Hayes at haze@rcn.com |
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UNEMPLOYMENT STILL RAMPANT AMONG EX-GUSH KATIF RESIDENTS
Posted by Hillel Fendel, June 14, 2006. |
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No joy in the Knesset Finance Committee, whose members received the latest report on the status of the uprooted Gush Katif residents today. 70% of the families in Nitzan are still unemployed. Some 150 expellees demonstrated today, for the fourth straight day, on the Ashkelon highway. Blocking the highway near the hastily-constructed town of Nitzan - where the largest amount of expelled families live as they wait for their permanent communities to be planned and built - the protestors demand solutions for their unemployment and inability to resume the farming in which they were engaged while living Gush Katif. The numbers submitted to the Finance Committee today, ten months after the expulsion, include the following: * 51% of the expellees are still unemployed The Agricultural Ministry recently opened a retraining course for people wanting to be -- shepherds! The six-week course has attracted not only former Gush Katif residents, but also others who wish to change agricultural professions. Among the topics covered in the course are sheep care, milking, nourishment, preparing for breeding and birth, sheep diseases, making professional decisions, planning structures, and financial flock planning. Israel has a total of 2,400 shepherds in the Jewish, Arab and Bedouin sectors - a number that has grown in recent years because of the demand for sheep cheese and meats. Hillel Fendel is senior news editor at Arutz Sheva (www.IsraelNN.com). |
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TERRORISTS COUNT ON ISRAEL'S DECENCY; WILL BRITAIN GO UNDER BEFORE FRANCE; ISRAEL CRACKS DOWN ON JEWISH CRITICS
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 14, 2006. |
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WILL BRITAIN GO UNDER BEFORE FRANCE? The French are derided as appeasement-minded towards Islamism. Britain is praised as a faithful ally fighting terrorism in Iraq. In Britain, however, that policy is disliked and PM Blair is isolated over it. In France, police are much more active against Islamo-fascists. French police deplore London having turned itself into the European hub for Islamist organization. Distracted by Irish terrorism, Britain supposed that Al Qaeda was uninterested in it except for specific grievances. British ignored international terrorism, hoping that by not causing grievances, it would be left alone. Even after London trains were bombed, Britain held to that disproved theory. It still does not realize that the Islamists are fanatical and incorrigible and that international terrorism is religiously motivated. Britain is moving towards cultural collapse and appeasement of Islam. It won't be much of an ally, if that keeps up (Daniel Freedman, 5/25, NY Sun 5/25, Op.-Ed.). Some days, the reports from Europe are of resistance, and some days, of appeasement. In mentioning Holland's expulsion of a critic of Islam, the Sun noted that the government did not prosecute those who had issued death threats against her. France, Germany, and Italy have paid a total ransom of at least $45 million to Iraqi terrorists. Sweden, Romania, Turkey, and Jordan probably paid ransom, too. The money finances attacks on the US and British troops there. British police occasionally raid some Islamist activists, but mainly tolerate the 16,000 estimated British Muslim terrorists and active supporters of terrorism. The Muslim population does not repudiate the terrorists, although Al Qaida trained thousands of them and hundreds wish to be suicide bombers. Both the Prince of Wales and Conservative leader David Cameron ignore terrorism or uphold appeasement of it. They pretend that the big problem is "Islamophobia." (Daniel Johnson, 5/25, Op.-Ed.). Apparently the worst sin in the West is for a racist to call you a racist. That must be avoided at all costs. But the cost is freedom and life. Why don't Muslim populations in the West condemn terrorism? Is it because they fear it or they sympathize with it? If the former, then we are giving Islamists freedom of extortion, leaving decent people afraid to speak out. If the latter, then the general Muslim population is hostile, and we must act accordingly. I think its some of both. TERRORISTS COUNT ON ISRAELI DECENCY An Israeli stopped for a fellow motorist in apparent distress. When the Jew came near, the other man, an Arab, stabbed him (Arutz-7, 5/28). Israel needs knife control, or is it Arab control? ABBAS PLANS MILITARY EXPANSION Abbas is in charge of most of the P.A. "security forces" and Fatah. Oslo authorized a lightly armed security force of 18,000. When Arafat exceeded that, Israel agreed to 30,000. The P.A. has since then expanded it to 70,000 (plus a few thousand for a new force set up by Hamas). That is in addition to the private militias. After having discovered a plot by Islamic Jihad to assassinate him, Abbas has asked for "some" arms for his presidential guard, to protect him. Israel agreed to send it. Now he proposes expanding the guard from almost 2,000 to 10,000. Many of them would belong to Fatah, which the guard is supposed to help protect him from (IMRA, 5/27). This is an admission that he doesn't control the other P.A. security forces nor Fatah. Just before the P.A. election, Abbas hired another 20,000 gunmen for the security forces, apparently for electoral purposes. They are part of what the newspapers refer to as the "bloated" P.A. staff, for which the P.A. begs foreign taxpayers to subsidize. Otherwise, the Arabs there face a "humanitarian crisis." You see, it isn't humanitarian for foreign enemies of jihad not to subsidize all of the 70,000 gunmen on the payroll and expanding. The so-called peace proposal by the convicted terrorists in Israel prisons, that he endorses, does not recognize Israel and would authorize further attacks on any part of Israeli-controlled territory that had been on the non-Israel side of the armistice line. Since Abbas refused to crack down on Hamas when he might have, why furnish him with more gunmen? Why does Israel pay for it? Why doesn't Israel to tell him to ask the foreign Arab champions of the Palestinian Arabs to pay for it? STILL ANOTHER WARNING FROM ISRAEL Terrorists had fired eight rockets from Lebanon into Israel, when PM Olmert sternly warned he would deal them a "painful blow" if they continued, as, he admitted, they were doing (IMRA, 5/28). Israel issues many warnings, few blows. The Arabs understand that they keep getting free shots at Israel, so long as they wait before continuing. Not waiting, however, "The Hizbullah terrorist organization launched a large scale attack this afternoon on communities and military bases in northern Israel along the border with Lebanon. Hizbullah fired Katyusha rockets, mortar shells, and attacked with sniper and machine gun fire. An IDF soldier was moderately wounded in the initial attack." "In response, the IDF attacked Hizbullah outposts in southern Lebanon with air and artillery fire." (IMRA, 5/27.) A Lebanese official called Israeli return fire "aggression" (NY Times, 5/29, A3). No results stated, as usual. What did the return fire accomplish? An Israeli general later did report the damage Israel inflicted. He said that Israeli counter-attacks destroyed many Hizbullah border and back-up positions and killed "many" terrorists. Intelligence sources anticipate a renewal of Hizbullah barrages soon (Arutz-7, 5/29). The Israeli response should have been devastating. Otherwise, it is not painful enough to deter more attacks. If capable of it, the best response would be to clear Hizbullah from the border. Note how false is the aggressor Arab accusation of Israeli aggression! WHOM THE U.S. WOULD FREE Two Arabs carrying a bag of explosives were on their way through Nablus, to commit terrorism against Israelis. Israeli troops caught them at a checkpoint (IMRA, 5/29) What Israel did runs counter to US policy. The US decides what are approved and permitted actions for other countries. For Israel, checkpoints are frowned upon and terrorist prisoners are to be released to encourage Abbas to stop terrorism (though he has neither inclination nor means. US policy is to inhibit Israeli defense against terrorism, because it inconveniences the Arabs. Israel would be forced to withdraw. The less Israel does against terrorism, and the more the US silently backs it, the more uninhibited terrorists must become, and the less likely any Arab leader ever would arise who would be inclined to stop terrorism. The more successful it is, the more popular it becomes among the Arabs. IRAN ESCALATES AGAINST ISRAEL -- WITH IMPUNITY Iran has given Hizbullah rockets with a range of 200 kilometers, twice the distance of the previous arsenal. That puts Tel Aviv within range. Some rockets struck a military base. The enemy's developing ability to strike strategic targets does not concern Israeli officials, because, so far, a large number of people were not killed. A large number must be killed, before Israel would try to root out what is becoming deeply rooted. Hizbullah's rising military prowess threatens Lebanon's independence (IMRA, 5/29). ISRAEL CRACKS DOWN -- ON JEWISH CRITICS Israel has set a trial date for Nadia Matar, a head of Women in Green, well-known protestors against Israeli appeasement of the Arabs. She had sharply rebuked the official in charge of resettling the settlers. Instead of answering her accusation, the government is prosecuting her for "insulting a public official." The State has a law against insulting public officials (IMRA, 5/29). What is an "insult"? Suppose the accusation is true? Dictatorships prefer shutting up critics to rebutting or relenting. They pretend they nevertheless have free speech. Nobody believes that, say, Syria has free speech. But they think that Israel does. It is only partly free, and is being chilled. I think her criticism was within the bounds of democratic controversy. It was not nearly as vitriolic and slanderous as speeches by leftists and Arabs, who do not get prosecuted. Unequal enforcement of the law is another mark of dictatorship. Not a 100% dictatorship, not a dictatorship with blackshirts, redshirts, brownshirts, or Korans, but a growing dictatorship against half the country. KISSINGER & U.S. PERFIDY Sec. of State Kissinger's published papers show "pragmatism." "The papers also indicate that the US reached out to hostile Arabs three decades ago with an offer to work toward making Israel a "small friendly country..." (NY Times 5/27, A6.) "Reached out" means that he undertook appeasement. Appeasement is not pragmatic, for it strengthens diehard enemies. In this case it would betray Israel. His State Dept. was trying to oust Israel from the Territories. "Friendly" means helpless. Israelis would be slaughtered. Jews don't know how anti-Israel he was -- they think he saved Israel with war supplies, but he withheld them to extort concessions for the Arabs. Those assurances to Iraq came just a few months after Kissinger and Pres. Ford had signed several documents assuring Israel it would not do that. Two documents promised to help Israel retain the Golan (that the US wants Israel to negotiate away to its enemy). The promises were made to induce Israel to withdraw from the Sinai. It's the usual US and Arab tactic: promise, concession, betrayal. The US also promised not to offer a peace plan without consulting Israel. Seven years later, Pres Reagan offered just such a unilateral proposal. What good are US promises? (IMRA, 5/28 with notes from Widlanski's 'Can Israel Survive a Palestinian State?') BUSH & SENATE RELENTLESS A court ruled the Bush Administration in violation of law for issuing permits for a massive limestone mining project alongside Everglades National Park. The project would have poisoned the drinking water of millions of County residents, diverted water flows from the Park, and destroyed 30 square miles of habitat for rare wading birds. Another court struck down an Administration plan to exempt 20,000 old power plants, refineries, and factories from installing modern pollution controls when they otherwise modernize. They would have emitted millions of tons of additional pollution. To help pay for the deficit, the Administration proposes selling 1,250 square miles of national forests and public wild land to logging companies, real estate developers, etc.. That is selling the treasure of future generations to pay for the excess spending of the present one (Natural Resources Defense Council's Nature's Voice, May, 2006). As Al Gore said in his movie, An Inconvenient Truth, there is an equally important attack to defend ourselves from besides terrorism. That is from nature, destabilized by global warming. From dozens of different types of mutually consistent, scientific recordings, the film proves the danger imminent and accelerating, beyond normal planetary variations, which can be traced back tens of thousands of years, apparently due to mankind's carelessness, and devastating beyond anything mankind has known. The remedies are available and actually profitable, if we can get beyond selfish interests' short-sighted cheapness. The Administration claims there is scientific doubt that mankind can affect nature so thoroughly. But we put the gases up that warm the atmosphere that melts the glaciers that flood low-lying countries! Scientists have found the repercussions far swifter, once it gets past a certain point, and it has! Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
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THANK YOU NADIA!
Posted by Sara Layah Shomron, June 14, 2006. |
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In a show of solidarity and support for "Women in Green" leader Nadia Matar, a group of Gush Katif evacuees traveled up to the Shalom Court in the Russian Compound of the Jerusalem Court house today where Nadia is standing trial. This is a precedent setting case. This outspoken leader who promotes Jewish settlement throughout the Land of Israel is charged with the crime of insulting a public official. Yonaton Bassi, head of the Disengagement compensation committee known as SELA, was likened to the Judenrat (Jewish elders who represented the Jewish ghetto to the Nazis and followed their orders); yet unlike those who sat on the Judenrat committee, Yonaton Bassi had a choice. The State of Israel claims to be a democracy thereby affording its citizens certain inalienable rights. Among these is Freedom of Speech. If we don't protect and use this basic right -- we will lose it, and ever so gradually our so called democracy will slip away and demagoguery may take hold. Neither I nor any other Gush Katif evacuee was allowed entry into the court room. We stood at the front of the line and were told by the two security guards to wait. Others were allowed in -- but we were to wait and see if there was room for us. We countered to the security guards to allow one Gush Katif representative into the court house. After all, Nadia stood hand in hand with our struggle to live in and not be expelled from any part of the Land of Israel. The security guards again told us to wait. A reporter inquired of the guards as to why former Gush Katif residents weren't allowed entry. They wouldn't answer. He then asked to speak with a supervisor who explained that only 25 people were allowed into the court room and it was full. But we countered that we had been at the front of the line from the onset. It was with deliberate, callous, and wanton disregard that the disenfranchised Gush Katif evacuees were denied access to a public Israeli court room. The case against Nadia Matar has been postponed until September. This may be due to the governmental hierarchal fear of her growing support further fueled by the media attention to this case. Regardless, all citizens of the State of Israel are Nadia. We all hang in the precipice of losing our fundamental and precious Freedom of Speech. Sara Shomron is a refugee from Neve Dekalim. |
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HAARETZ DENOUNCES FINANCIAL MALFEASANCE AT TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY
Posted by Steven Plaut, June 14, 2006. |
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1. The Return of the "T" Word to Haaretz Comrades, it is not every day that Haaretz, the Palestinian daily published in Hebrew, uses the term "terrorist". Instead, it has followed for years the lead of the BBC, CNN, and others in referring to Palestinian mass murderers of Jewish children and other civilians as "activists" or occasionally militants. That way, the paper is signally its implicit judtifying (no that was not a spelling mistake)of the murders. After all, if the terrorists are driven by a sense of desperation due to Israel's racist cussedness, then why disrespect the killers by calling them inappropriate names like "terrorists"? Suicide bombers would always be included in the body count of "victims". For years, the term "terrorist" did not appear anywhere in Haaretz, neither in reference to Palestinian terror nor to anti-American terror in Iraq. But today, a minor miracle occurred. The word appears in Haaretz, not once but half a dozen times. Why? It is being used with regard to a "Jewish terrorist", one Eden Natan-Zada, an apparently mentally-deranged soldier who shot to death four people on a bus in the town of Shefaram 10 months ago. Why do I say he seems to have been deranged? Haaretz reports that his own parents had tipped off the army and police that they suspected their son was unstable and about to do something insane. If he was insane, then in fact he was neither a terrorist nor a murderer. No one is suggesting he had any help or collaborators. And no Jew, as far as I know, justified the soldier's killing of Arabs in Shfaram. So was he insane? We will never know for sure. After being disarmed and apprehended, a mob beat him to death. The issue is in the news because the police traced those who killed the soldier and have arrested them. The Caring Crowd is outraged that the killers of the soldier have been arrested. Haaretz today has three separate headlines trumpeting the arrest
of those Arabs who merely bludgeoned to death this "terrorist" and the
"T" word is used throughout, for the Jew! See for yourself in English
at
Meanwhile, the article about the killers of the "terrorist" is accompanied by a little piece of Haaretz yellow journalism, a "news story" declaring that no evidence has been found that any Rabbi gave the killer Natan-Zada a rabbinic go-ahead to murder Arabs before he did so. Huh? Clearly Haaretz wants to repeat for godzillionth time the blood libel and outright lie that Rabbis give "go-aheads" to murder people, a Der Sturmer style fabrication repeated endlessly with respect to the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by Yigal Amir. (By the way Amir, evidently, was NOT insane.) Not a shred of evidence has ever emerged that any Rabbi has ever given any "go-ahead" to murder anyone. It is only a small jump from such ludicrous lying to claiming that Jews drink gentile blood on Passover. 2. On another matter, Haaretz economics writer Haim Be'er writes in the business section on June 13 the following (my translation - it is not in English site): "Tel Aviv University Exploits Manpower Agency Workers while the Cost of the Salary of University President Itamar Rabinovh is 57,492 NIS per month. "While 600 adjunct instructors at Tel Aviv University are struggling to get basic social benefits (like pension -- SP), and while there is a danger that the university Medical School might be shut down, while manpower agency employees are emplyed at the university without become regularstaff members in the name of cost savings - the "salary festivity" at Tel Aviv University proceeds! "... The monthly salary of university president Prof. Itamar Rabinovich is 57,492 NIS per month." Article then goes on to denounce other astronomical salaries for other senior campus officials. 3. CHORUS OF HYPOCRITES [reaction to Gaza Beach incident] (Article by Editor Amnon Dankner, Ma'ariv, 12.6.06 [Translation provided by Israel Government Press Office] It is still not at all clear what caused the deaths of seven members of the Palestinian family on the Gazan beach. They may have touched an old shell; they may have also stepped on a mine prepared by the Palestinians themselves against a seaborne infiltration of Israeli forces. Yet, already, even before the matter has been fully clarified, that well-known international chorus is bewailing that moral image of Israel is in decline by these very acts that it has yet to be proven to have committed. This joy for self-flagellation and simultaneous dragging of the IDF through the mud alongside the hypocritical choir of condemnation by the Arabs' and their automatic supporters is daunting and reprehensible. Even if it is eventually proven that that which killed and maimed on the Gazan beach was an Israeli shell, that was fired - of course - without the intention of attacking innocents, there is still no place for the moral indignation that represents - in actuality - a very faulty position, precisely from a moral point-of-view. The State of Israel has every right in the world to aggressively defend its citizens from Kassam rocket fire. This right must permit it that which the IDF is doing - to shell open areas from which the Palestinian cells are launching the Kassam rockets. The Palestinians in Gaza can only make claims on themselves: We withdrew from the Gaza Strip, down to the last centimeter, in a painful, wrenching step; we shattered communities and families and we are entitled to demand complete quiet from the Palestinian side in Gaza. We are also entitled to respond with force when the lives of Israeli residents are put at risk and to try to remove the harrowing nightmare that is hanging over our heads day and night. It is very easy to claim, as [Israeli author] David Grossman did here yesterday, that all of these military efforts are in vain because the Palestinian fighting continues. But if we do not take the steps that we are taking in the face of this aggression, would it be better? Will the Palestinians not be encouraged to continue with greater impetus and thereby claim many victims? The call to declare a ceasefire and sit down to unconditional negotiations without preconditions no longer sounds as good since the experience of those blood-soaked years after the Oslo accords. It has an anachronistic and irrelevant taste, certainly after the Palestinians crowned themselves with an extremist and uncompromising Hamas administration. To think that this would lead to quiet and bring a halt to the killing of Israelis is surprising in both its naivete and its non-learning from experience. Once, my lot was with those who thought that if we would only be nicer, show more goodwill, be more humane and offer more concessions - everything would be just fine. But the lesson that we learned, and which cost us so much blood, is that this 1960's-flower-children-who-have-not-really-matured approach which thinks that if we just give peace a chance, it will crown us with garlands and we will be borne by white Hamas doves; if only we do not respond with force and do not stand for our lives, a warm sun of marvelous tranquility will shine upon us - is so stupid in the perspective of what we have gone through, that the brain bubbles with astonishment at hearing such things. We are living on our swords in the face of a tangible threat that is being heard loud and clear from Gaza, Ramallah, Damascus and Tehran. We are fighting against those seeking our souls, who are killing and maiming us. As is the way of war, the defending sword, as it is being swung, does not always strike those who are actually guilty. But if we exaggeratedly flagellate ourselves due to a shocking television photo and if our hearts soften due to a pointed article in The Guardian or the moral condemnation of the Quay D'Orsai, we will also undercut both the will and the ability to defend ourselves. There are no magic military solutions; this is true. But the conclusion that David Grossman drew here yesterday that in place of a non-existent military solution, there is a magic diplomatic solution, is also incorrect. There is the hard work of assertive self-defense replete with the military measures without which even David Grossman would not feel safe in his home. The perspective of time requires forbearance, restraint, determination and patience. And it is also not worthwhile to hastily cast guilt upon ourselves because we dare to stand up for what is ours and for our lives. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist,
a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author
of "The Scout." He frequently comments -- both seriously and
satirically -- on Israeli politics and the left wing academic
community. His website address is
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PA TV FALSIFIED MOHAMMED AL DURA CLIP AS IT FALSIFIED GAZA BEACH VIDEO
Posted by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook, June 13, 2006. |
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PMW reported yesterday that Palestinian Authority (PA) TV has been broadcasting a falsified video clip of the events on the Gaza beach on Friday in an attempt to blame Israel for the deaths. [Yesterday's bulletin is reprinted below.] In the new falsification, an unrelated video clip of an Israeli missile boat was edited into news footage to make it appear as if the Israeli boat intentionally fired on civilians. This is the same technique that PA TV used after Muhammad Al-Dura was killed in a cross fire in the Gaza Strip in 2000. Subsequent analysis of that incident has shown that Palestinian fire likely killed the boy. But the PA TV propaganda clip inserted footage of an Israeli soldier from a completely different incident to make it look as if a soldier deliberately aimed at and shot Al-Dura. That doctored video clip was broadcast hundreds of times on PA TV. 
Reprinted PMW June 12, 2006 Bulletin: "PA TV falsifies video of Gaza deaths"
Palestinian Authority TV has been repeatedly broadcasting a falsified video clip of the events surrounding the deaths of seven family members on the Gaza beach on Friday. In an attempt to blame Israel's navy for the deaths, PA TV took unrelated video of an Israeli missile boat firing at Gaza earlier in the day and edited them into the scenes, creating the impression Israeli responsibility. 
The following is the time frame of the PA TV editing and falsification: * 00:00-0:32 seconds: PATV clip introduces the scene by showing an Israeli missile boat firing on the Gaza coast. Audio of ambulance siren is added to visual to create false impression that boat was shooting at same time as ambulances were present. The video of the Israeli navy was unrelated to the deaths, having been filmed earlier in the day and had already released to the media and to the internet by the Israeli army at 4:00 PM, an hour prior to the deaths. To see the falsified PA TV broadcast of the evacuation, download
Comment: It should be noted that not only is the video falsified, but
the beach scene clearly backs the Israeli contention that the deaths
were not caused by an Israeli shell. Any Israeli shell would have left
a giant crater and spread sand over the entire area, as well as on the
victims. There is no crater and the beach scene is not disturbed in a
way that indicates an Israeli shell could have landed nearby.
Itamar Marcus is director of PMW -- Palestinian Media Watch --
(http://www.pmw.org.il). PMW is based in Jerusalem. Barbara Crook, a
writer and university lecturer based in Ottawa, Canada, is PMW's
North American representative.
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PERCEPTIONS OF JEWS BY GENTILES
Posted by Ramy Dishy, June 13, 2006. |
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Some people like the Jews, and some do not. But no thoughtful man can deny the fact that they are, beyond any question, the most formidable and the most remarkable race which has appeared in the world."
"The Jew is that sacred being who has brought down from heaven the everlasting fire, and has illumined with it the entire world. He is the religious source, spring, and fountain out of which all the rest of the peoples have drawn their beliefs and their religions."
"It was in vain that we locked them up for several hundred years behind the walls of the Ghetto. No sooner were their prison gates unbarred than they easily caught up with us, even on those paths which we opened up without their aid."
"The Jew gave us the Outside and the Inside - our outlook and our inner life. We can hardly get up in the morning or cross the street without being Jewish. We dream Jewish dreams and hope Jewish hopes. Most of our best words, in fact - new, adventure, surprise, unique, individual, person, vocation, time, history, future, freedom, progress, spirit, faith, hope, justice - are the gifts of the Jews."
"One of the gifts of the Jewish culture to Christianity is that it has taught Christians to think like Jews, and any modern man who has not learned to think as though he were a Jew can hardly be said to have learned to think at all."
"It is certain that in certain parts of the world we can see a peculiar people, separated from the other peoples of the world and this is called the Jewish people.... This people is not only of remarkable antiquity but has also lasted for a singular long time... For whereas the people of Greece and Italy, of Sparta, Athens and Rome and others who came so much later have perished so long ago, these still exist, despite the efforts of so many powerful kings who have tried a hundred times to wipe them out, as their historians testify, and as can easily be judged by the natural order of things over such a long spell of years. They have always been preserved, however, and their preservation was foretold... My encounter with this people amazes me..."
The Jewish vision became the prototype for many similar grand designs for humanity, both divine and man made The Jews, therefore, stand at the center of the perennial attempt to give human life the dignity of a purpose."
As long as the world lasts, all who want to make progress in righteousness will come to Israel for inspiration as to the people who had the sense for righteousness most glowing and strongest."
"Indeed it is difficult for all other nations of the world to live in the presence of the Jews. It is irritating and most uncomfortable. The Jews embarrass the world as they have done things which are beyond the imaginable. They have become moral strangers since the day their forefather, Abraham, introduced the world to high ethical standards and to the fear of Heaven. They brought the world the Ten Commandments, which many nations prefer to defy. They violated the rules of history by staying alive, totally at odds with common sense and historical evidence. They outlived all their former enemies, including vast empires such as the Romans and the Greeks. They angered the world with their return to their homeland after 2000 years of exile and after the murder of six million of their brothers and sisters. "They aggravated mankind by building, in the wink of an eye, a democratic State which others were not able to create in even hundreds of years. They built living monuments such as the duty to be holy and the privilege to serve one's fellow men. "They had their hands in every human progressive endeavor, whether in science, medicine, psychology or any other discipline, while totally out of proportion to their actual numbers. They gave the world the Bible and even their "savior." "Jews taught the world not to accept the world as it is, but to transform it, yet only a few nations wanted to listen. Moreover, the Jews introduced the world to one God, yet only a minority wanted to draw the moral consequences. So the nations of the world realize that they would have been lost without the Jews. And while their subconscious tries to remind them of how much of Western civilization is framed in terms of concepts first articulated by the Jews, they do anything to suppress it. "They deny that Jews remind them of a higher purpose of life and the need to be honorable, and do anything to escape its consequences. It is simply too much to handle for them, too embarrassing to admit, and above all, too difficult to live by. "So the nations of the world decided once again to go out of 'their' way in order to find a stick to hit the Jews. The goal: to prove that Jews are as immoral and guilty of massacre and genocide as some of they themselves are. "All this in order to hide and justify their own failure to even protest when six million Jews were brought to the slaughterhouses of Auschwitz and Dachau; so as to wipe out the moral conscience of which the Jews remind them, and they found a stick. "Nothing could be more gratifying for them than to find the Jews in a struggle with another people (who are completely terrorized by their own leaders) against whom the Jews, against their best wishes, have to defend themselves in order to survive. With great satisfaction, the world allows and initiates the rewriting of history so as to fuel the rage of yet another people against the Jews. This in spite of the fact that the nations understand very well that peace between the parties could have come a long time ago, if only the Jews would have had a fair chance. "Instead, they happily jumped on the wagon of hate so as to justify their jealousy of the Jews and their incompetence to deal with their own moral issues. When Jews look at the bizarre play taking place in The Hague, they can only smile as this artificial game once more proves how the world paradoxically admits the Jews uniqueness. It is in their need to undermine the Jews that they actually raise them. "The study of history of Europe during the past centuries teaches us one uniform lesson: That the nations which received and in any way dealt fairly and mercifully with the Jew have prospered; and that the nations that have tortured and oppressed them have written out their own curse."
"If there is any honor in all the world that I should like, it would be to be an honorary Jewish citizen."
Contact Ramy Dishy at clement32@sympatico.ca |
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A MESSAGE FROM PESACH ACEMAN FROM KATIF NET
Posted by Pesach Aceman, June 13, 2006. |
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Editor's Note: Some dedicated people continue to run Katif.net,
which has information on what's been happening to the refugees from
Gush Katif. You can access information at http://www.english.katif.net
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Shalom
I am helping Moti Sender out with the English side of the website as I did when I had moved 6 months before the expulsion (with my family) to Gush Katif and Gane Tal. Most people including Israelis, are not in the know about the truth of the situation of the expellees of Gush Katif. Moti is one of those expellees. The web site was created by Moti some 6 years ago before there ever was talk of expulsion and was supported solely by Moti. At that time it was not a hardship and it was born out of a labor of love. It continued to be supported by him personally as well as through contributions and sales from the web site store which was created in time to publicize the plight of the pending expulsion/disengagement. However, now it continues to be a labor of love for Am Yisrael and trying to preserve the history, through word and pictures, of what has transpired over 30 years and particularly since the uprooting of the residents and the loss of their way of life. For Moti personally, it has meant loss of his financial survival through agriculture because the government has not followed through with their promises of support. He as yet has not received any area to begin his agriculture business anew but continues to preserve the history and on goings of the former Gush Katif residents, not only Gane Tal his former home. This is a labor of love solely aimed at preserving what I am sure will be a major historical event in the history of Israel. I recall personally when I first came on aliyah in 1973 that there was talk and eventual establishment of Gush Katif on 1976/7. What happened with the expulsion of Yamit, Moti does not want to see happen with Gush Katif. That is no significant record of its story has been preserved and soon those who were expelled from Yamit will be gone along with their stories and tragedies. So I told Moti that I would write to you to see if you can help or even suggest how he can get some support until he is back on his feet and independent again in the new Gane Tal. I know he is not alone and that there are various groups seeking support but there is no such attempt as his in attempting to preserve the history of part of Am Yehudi. Perhaps, as someone who has helped out the expellees in the past, you can help either personally or by forwarding this to your friends Sincerely pesach aceman
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WHY SHOULD THE TERRORISTS STOP?
Posted by Sergio Tezza (HaDaR), June 13, 2006. |
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After the last of a long series of attacks by Arabic-speaking vampires, we heard the usual empty words from our political and military "leaders": the usual "parole, parole, parole...." It seems that we are facing the typical reactions of a scared and cowardly boy in front of the continuous molestation and violence on the part of the neighbourhood bully: "I warn you, if you hit me again...." And so, more hits come, while the cowardly boy cries; another spit in the face comes, while he says, "It's raining" in the best ghetto tradition. Actually, let's not insult the Ghetto Jews. They had a limited choice of reactions. Today, in Israel, it is not so. Or at least, it should not be so; not according to the Socialist Zionists who never missed an opportunity to allege their superiority to the "Jews of the Shoah", whom they insulted for decades while glorifying the New Jew, the "Israeli", by saying that they would have never behaved "like sheep to the slaughter". Every honest person knows that in most circumstances, there was really no choice except deciding to die sooner or later. However, our local "lemmings" in the government and high up in the army headquarters today are acting much worse, since they are not under Nazi control. One feels like saying: "If you voted for them, then you deserve them!" From the Knesset and the government they keep on lying to us, saying that there is no military solution. Not only that, but they also continue -- just like lemmings do -- on the road to national suicide: giving prizes to terrorists and proposing more unilateral withdrawals, and the abandonment, into the hands of a sworn enemy, of our people's cradle and of our eternal heritage -- the Land of Israel. Evidently, for them, it is not enough that they have encouraged the terrorists -- after twelve years of continuous massacres on the roads, and in the squares, markets, buses and shopping malls all over Israel -- by gifting them the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria. In a process that they called cynically and in an Orwellian way "Disengagement" (what did we actually "disengage" from, may I ask?), the deportation of ten thousand Jews from their homes, and the destruction of over thirty years of work and sacrifices on the part of our valiant pioneers, they contributed in such a great way to the creation of the Hamastan in Gaza. Had the Allied powers and the partisans shown towards the Nazis of yesteryear the same attitude shown by our "leaders" towards today's Nazis, Europe would be speaking German and Asia, Japanese. Thank G-d, the Allies and the partisans did not suffer from "lemmings' disease". Even if only after the tragic error of appeasement, they fought a war without truces against the Axis powers. They did not send flour to the Germans, but to a people who supported Hitler by over 90% margins, they threw phosphorous bombs and tons of TNT 24 hours a day, day after day, for years. In Dresden and Hamburg, there were no German divisions, yet they were carpet bombed to sap the fighting spirit of the Germans and -- why not? -- to make sure that the little Nazis would not grow-up to be adult Nazis, and that Nazi mothers would not produce more little ones. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki shortened the war by about one year, and saved the lives of over one million US soldiers and eight million Japanese soldiers and civilians. Our "leaders", on the contrary, keep on whining over the fact, for example, that many homicide bombers and terrorists of all sorts come out of Jenin, and then tell us that it is not possible to hermetically close the area. However, why deal with the wrong issue? Why should we close ourselves behind higher and higher walls, like cowards who do not understand that by so doing, we only show weakness? As much as we show only weakness when we bomb empty fields with our artillery, at the price of millions of dollars that instead could, and should, be used to cure the sick and feed the hungry. And, to top it all, our grasshopper-style "leaders" even apologize when -- by mistake! -- they kill some enemies. No terrorist could come out of Jenin if Jenin was really put under steel and fire: Not by sending young foot soldiers there to be killed, but by carpet bombing it from a safe distance. Just as the USAF did after the massacre of the Twin Towers, for a month, from 35,000 ft. altitude with B1 and Flying Fortresses. They bombed Mazar El-Sharif, an Afghan city formerly home to 150,000 inhabitants, a Taliban stronghold. The world at large hates us anyway, and it is ready to justify even the bloodiest of terror attacks against us, so why worry about what they'll say instead of erasing enemy strongholds from the map, thus making sure that no more vampires and predators will ever get out from there to murder us? The whole Israeli approach to the problem of Arab terrorism is a wrong and losing approach; it is an approach based on the only losing military strategy -- the defensive strategy. To protect our citizens is necessary, but that is a police-type of job; it should not be the focus of our military. The focus of our military should be to strike the enemy with overwhelming force, causing such unbearable losses that any attack against us would be much more difficult, if not impossible. In that strategy, it would cost the enemy too much and they would have no more manpower to perpetrate further attacks. And that should be done until unconditional surrender or annihilation of the enemy, exactly as was done with the Nazis of yesteryear. The only alternative to what I mentioned above, an alternative that could spare human lives, would be to offer all those who refuse to live in peace with us under Jewish sovereignty over our land to be repatriated to the Arab countries. However, for those who kill us, or those who rise to kill us, our Torah teaches us that we must pre-empt them and kill them first ("Ha-qam lehorghekha, hashqem lehorgo"). As an alternative, we can continue to demonstrate the validity of another teaching by our sages, of blessed memory, who said, "Whoever shows mercy to the cruel, will end up being cruel to the merciful." [Qoheleth Rabbah] Sergio Tessa can be reached at Hadar-Israel@verizon.net.
This article is archived at
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IDF REBUILDS TERRORIST FAMILY'S WALL
Posted by Jewish Community of Hebron, June 13, 2006. |
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Hebron Brigade Commander, Colonel Yehuda Fuchs, notified the Jewish community of Hebron that tomorrow massive forces will arrive in the city to rebuild the "Sharabati Wall" in the Avraham Avinu neighborhood. The wall is adjacent to the neighborhood playground. 
The wall was originally constructed about a year ago in order to allow the Sharabati family to renovate their home which is located only meters from the playground and overlooks the neighborhood. It was from this home that one of the Sharabati sons jumped into the Jewish neighborhood, knife in hand, ready to kill. Fortunately he was apprehended before he had time to hurt anyone. However shortly afterwards the IDF turned him over to the 'terrorist PLO police' who promptly released him and sent him home. In addition, a number of bombs were hurled into the playground from the direction of this house. The Sharabati family hasn't lived in this house for over five years. However the IDF and the Defense ministry decided to allow them to renovate it and then move back in. This, despite the immediate danger to the neighborhood and nearby children's kindergarten. A few months ago part of the wall fell, and presently the IDF intends to rebuild it. In order to fulfill this mission, the IDF notified the community that parts of the neighborhood would be declared a 'closed military zone' for 36 hours: from Tuesday morning at six o'clock until midnight the following day. As a result, the kindergarten will be forced to close for these two days, (which is against the law). Hebron's Jewish community has appealed to the Israeli supreme court, demanding a temporary injunction forbidding closing of the kindergarten and the rebuilding of the wall until the various parties involved meet with Hebron's community leadership, allowing them to reach a reasonable solution without having to build a wall in the middle of the neighborhood. A Hebron spokesman issued the following statement: It is difficult to comprehend why the IDF is so determined to waste so much manpower and money in order to unnecessarily 'protect' the Avraham Avinu neighborhood, while at the same time, refrain from protecting Israelis living in southern Israel, especially those living in Sderot, who are being attacked by Arab-launched missiles by the hour. Yesterday afternoon Hebron appealed the IDF decision to rebuild the Sharabati Wall. The appeal was presented to Supreme Court justice Prokatzia, who is not know for her right-wing leanings. It requested a temporary injunction preventing rebuilding of the wall. The appeal contained several points, however it centered around the forced closing of the Hebron kindergarten, which is illegal. The judge ordered the government to respond to Hebron's charges, and recessed, waiting for the response. The government never responded. And the judge went home without ruling one way or the other. A few hours later IDF attorneys appeared at the judge's home, begging her to reject Hebron's appeal. She did so, and signed an order okaying the rebuilding of the wall. So much for the high court of 'justice,' This morning, at about 5:30, dozens of police, riot squad, border police, soldiers and officers appeared at the Avraham Avinu neighborhood. The quickly realized that community residents were not going to surrender quietly to the planned wall. A group of over 20 girls had locked themselves into the community kindergarten, one of the areas declared officially off-limits, part of the 'closed military zone.' It took the security forces a couple of hours before they were able to break thru the kindergarten gate and pull the girls down, some of whom were sitting atop the building's roof. Fortunately no one was injured but 19 of the girls were arrested. Some were pushed and shoved, others man-handled, and others, carried away. A few were released and others were taken to court in Jerusalem, where the prosecutor is demanding that some be remanded in prison until the conclusion of all proceedings against them for having 'attacked the police.' The girls are all minors, between the ages of 12 and 15. Following the arrests, workers moved in and started the process of rebuilding the Sharabati wall. The work has continued all day and will continue tomorrow, when they are expected to finish. Yesterday afternoon Hebron appealed the IDF decision to rebuild the Sharabati Wall. The appeal was presented to Supreme Court justice Prokatzia, who is not know for her right-wing leanings. It requested a temporary injunction preventing rebuilding of the wall. The appeal contained several points, however it centered around the forced closing of the Hebron kindergarten, which is illegal. The judge ordered the government to respond to Hebron's charges, and recessed, waiting for the response. The government never responded. And the judge went home without ruling one way or the other. A few hours later IDF attorneys appeared at the judge's home, begging her to reject Hebron's appeal. She did so, and signed an order okaying the rebuilding of the wall. So much for the high court of 'justice,' This morning, at about 5:30, dozens of police, riot squad, border police, soldiers and officers appeared at the Avraham Avinu neighborhood. The quickly realized that community residents were not going to surrender quietly to the planned wall. A group of over 20 girls had locked themselves into the community kindergarten, one of the areas declared officially off-limits, part of the 'closed military zone.' It took the security forces a couple of hours before they were able to break thru the kindergarten gate and pull the girls down, some of whom were sitting atop the building's roof. Fortunately no one was injured but 19 of the girls were arrested. Some were pushed and shoved, others man-handled, and others, carried away. A few were released and others were taken to court in Jerusalem, where the prosecutor is demanding that some be remanded in prison until the conclusion of all proceedings against them for having 'attacked the police.' The girls are all minors, between the ages of 12 and 15. Following the arrests, workers moved in and started the process of rebuilding the Sharabati wall. The work has continued all day and will continue tomorrow, when they are expected to finish. A Hebron spokesman issued the following statement: We have been inundated with queries, 'why the protest?' It should be clear: we have no intentions of living behind walls, especially when they are built to protect Arab terrorists. The IDF knew very well how to expel some 10,000 people from their homes, when the reasons suited them. There is absolutely no reason in the world why a known terrorist family should be awarded a home overlooking a Jewish neighborhood in Hebron. Their presence is a constant danger to the neighborhood's children and other residents. We will continue to protest the existence of the wall until it is removed from our midst, one way or another. You can contribute directly to The Jewish Community of Hebron, POB10, Kiryat Arba-Hebron 90100, hebron@hebron.org.il, 972-2-9965333 or write to The Hebron Fund, 1760 Ocean Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11230, hebronfund@aol.com |
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WHAT A PALESTINIAN STATE WOULD LOOK LIKE
Posted by May Leiner, June 13, 2006. |
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This article by Cinnamon Stillwell was published last October. It is well worth repeating. Cinnamon Stillwell is a San Francisco Bay Area-based columnist for SFGate.com, Frontpagemag.com, Israel National News, and Jewish Press. She can be reached at cinnamonstillwell@yahoo.com. For more information, go to www.CinnamonStillwell.com. |
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Since Israel's disengagement from the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians have basically been left to their own devices. The world has gotten an eyeful of just what a much-anticipated Palestinian state might look like and it's not a pretty picture. The dust hadn't even settled after the last of the Jews had been removed from Gaza when Palestinians resorted to form. Looting and demolishing buildings they might otherwise have been able to reside in, the Palestinians displayed the sort of destructive and dysfunctional behavior they've become known for. They soon graduated to burning down synagogues[1], a time honored tradition from the days of Nazi Germany. In a final orgy of idiocy, they tore apart the expensive greenhouses[2] that altruistic Jews, among others, had foolishly purchased for them in the hopes that they would actually produce something. Who needs food when you can destroy a greenhouse instead? When reported at all, such actions were described by the mainstream media merely as harmless "celebrations" or chalked up to the frustrations of a long "oppressed" people. Behavior that would be deemed unacceptable were it exhibited by any other group suddenly became fodder for touchy-feely news segments. None of these "reporters" came to the obvious conclusion that had any unarmed Jews remained in the evacuated settlements they would certainly have been slaughtered by these peace-loving Palestinian mobs. Facing a decrease in Jewish targets, the Palestinians have begun to eat their own. Vigilante killings have gone up exponentially this year, while kidnapping, theft and lawlessness in general[3] is also on the rise. Hamas managed to blow up 16 Palestinians during a routine "work accident"[4] at one of their famous kid-friendly rallies. Yet another rally[5] to "celebrate" the pullout was disrupted by shots fired into the air and crowds stoning the stage. Honor killings, already a regular feature[6] of Palestinian society, continued on unabated. Then there was the small matter of an American and a British reporter being kidnapped[7] by Palestinian terrorists. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along. In a glimmer of what "Palestinian democracy" is likely to portend, the terrorist group Hamas appears to be heading for a takeover of government institutions. Should they succeed, senior Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar has promised[8] to install Sharia or Islamic law under which both dancing and gays won't be allowed. I'm sure members of QUIT (Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism) will be speaking out against this injustice any day now. Anyone wondering what a Palestinian state might look like has only to observe the behavior cited above to get an answer. Palestinian culture, such as it is, has been mired in hatred for so long that they have little else to put forward. The death cult that has subsumed their society is in fact what they offer the world. While people all across the globe, including Jews, have survived upheaval and gone on to forge new lives and societies, the Palestinians seem to be incapable of creating anything. Without Israel providing them with water, food and jobs (before the Intifada) and the "international community" pumping them with money, they would simply die off in the desert or be subsumed by their more powerful Arab neighbors. In fact, the latter outcome appears more likely by the day. But it doesn't have to be this way. Long ago, I commented on the Palestinians' potential for achievement should they ever choose to redirect their considerable energies in more productive pursuits. Indeed, the skill at which elaborate effigies of Israeli and American symbols are constructed and later burned, displays a certain penchant for detail. If only effigy factories were a thriving industry, the Palestinians would be all set. Another Palestinian talent is public relations, an essential component of which consists of constant whining. In fact, they have a whole film industry devoted to producing such propaganda and manipulating the gullible Western media. It's called Pallywood. A fascinating short documentary (available online[9] ) by that name exposes the sets, actors, props and dupes for the world to see. Not that this will stop anyone from continuing to take part in the charade. Like I said, when you're good, you're good. From its mythical beginnings to its continuing ability to attract followers, the "Palestinian cause" has taken on a life of its own. It's the third world "resistance movement" de jour and entire classes of Westerners would have no purpose in life if not for its existence. The Palestinians can literally do or espouse anything and the world will willingly turn a blind eye. What's more, they're falling all over themselves to offer these paragons of virtue their own state. For my own part, I'm ready to give the Palestinians their own homeland right now... on Mars, that is. Come to think of it, I wouldn't wish that on Mars. Okay, Egypt[10], they're all yours. FOOTNOTES: 1. www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3140767,00.html
Contact May Leiner by email at MayLeiner@cs.com |
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MAYBE IT IS JUST A CASE OF DENIAL
Posted by Arlene Peck, June 13, 2006. |
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There was a time, in years gone by, when I was an easy target for every charity that needed a volunteer. If the Children of the World needed a cheerleader, then I would get my bucket, stand on the street corner and collect money for them. The same went for the Red Cross, neighborhood bake sales and battered women's shelters. I marched for everybody. Eventually, I felt pretty much burned out, a condition only exacerbated when I was asked to serve as a committee-woman by B'nai Brith, the national Jewish organization, and on the board of the Atlanta Jewish Welfare Federation. I could not believe the care and effort expended in finding money for black children who were then able to attend summer camp, or for the layettes that the charity hospital in Atlanta purchased to send welfare children home with nice wardrobes. And these very same Jewish Federations advertise that the children of Latino mothers won't lack for anything. They arrange and pay for English lessons for her many children, born across the border, and provide the new immigrants with food, housing, and hospital care. Further, these liberal Jewish groups at the same time allow Jewish Day Schools and Community Centers to close for lack of funding! My own daughter, who has three babies in a Jewish Day school in Atlanta is paying a tab of $37,000 to keep them in there. I think that books are included, but they're really not old enough to read yet. Outrageous! How many other mothers are forced to work another forty hours a week just to be able to afford to see their children get a good education? Certainly not the non-Jewish parent who never has to give it a thought that a Jewish organization is giving her child a scholarship. Over time, my anger with these midguided liberal leftists has grown. I am angry with fellow Jews who are clueless; Jews who haven't given a single thought to the fact that so many of their own, in Israel and here in America, need their charity. They want to tend everybody's garden except their own. I, like so many others, only have limited free time. So, reality forced me to the conclusion that although it was nice to help the arts and all the cultural and city programs that asked for help, to do so would have burned me out completely and emptied my pocketbook within a very short period of time. Therefore, my approach changed; from then on, I decided whenever a black church felt the need to invite a Jewish day school to a weekend retreat, I'd send a check to the Jewish school to cover part of the expense of hosting them. So far, it's never happened. I cannot ever recall any Christian or Muslim organization raising anything to sponsor a Jewish child. Recently, I went to Saint John's Hospital in Santa Monica. So many of the names on the plaque honouring their sponsors were Jewish. Yet, how many of these very same people have donated to a hospital in Israel? Actually, I sometimes wonder where all the money comes from to fill my mailbox on a daily basis with return address stickers, greeting cards, get well cards, seasonal and holiday cards, and, oh, let's not forget, those Easter or Xmas stickers (although neither is a big day around my house). Where do they find the funds to send out embossed cards of birds in flight, puppies at play or angels? Am I supposed to feel great remorse and write a larger check whenever I'm sent pictures of children with harelips, eyes bulging and stomachs distended from disease and starvation, or women with dead or dying babies at their breasts? I wonder how much of the donation check actually gets through, or does it go to pay bloated executive salaries? Sorry, I meant "administrative expenses". How crass of me to even remember, when being solicited for a donation to UNICEF, that they hate Israel and anything Jewish. These organizations are anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist and anti-Israel. Actually, the same goes for the Red Cross. And all too often, many of the children that I am supposed to send money to in these third world countries are baby Muslims who will be educated to grow up and kill the Zionists wherever they find them. Jews founded and led the NAACP and were at the forefront of the civil rights movement. And didn't we all support them? And what about the United Negro College Fund? Wasn't "a mind a terrible thing to waste"? We gave there, too. Is it asking too much for just a smidgen of support from members of these same groups, or their offspring, many of whom benefited from our contributions, but never give back? Recently, I had occasion to meet that amazing woman, Dr. Wafa Sultana, whose comments about the Arabs during an interview on the Arab television station Al-Jazeera were like "the shot heard around the world." One of her more insightful comments, concerning her childhood, is etched on my brain permanently. She related how, as a child growing up in Syria, she was taught that whatever happens in the world, it is the fault of the Jews: "I drop a dish in my kitchen, the Jews are behind it." Arab children are still being taught this today. I guess if it snows in Gaza, then it's because of the Jews. "Send money"? Why? Why is it that the Palestinians expect the West to help them, when they have been unwilling to recover the billions of aid dollars that Yasser Arafat stole from them over the years? And why is it that the Palestinians expect the West to help them when their fellow Muslims in oil-rich Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran and Dubai, among others, have not stepped forward to assist their poor co-Arabists and co-religionists? The West continues to feed them funds without demanding even a basic accountability. When will the West realize that so-called humanitarian aid goes largely into the pockets of a select few, for the salaries of killers posing as policemen and for weapons that kill Jews? Actually, I think they do realize it. As apathy is the hallmark of the West, I, like any sensible Jew with a memory should, can only conclude that they just don't care. Send them my money? I don't think so. Arlene Peck is an internationally syndicated columnist and television talk show hostess. She can be reached at: bestredhead@earthlink.net and www.arlenepeck.com. This article appeared in Arutz-Sheva (www.IsraelNN.com) June 11, 2006. |
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DAVID GROSSMAN'S FOOT IN MOUTH
Posted by Steven Plaut, June 13, 2006. |
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One of the most comic developments in recent days concerned the foot-in-mouth story of Israeli ultra-leftist writer David Grossman. Grossman is a longtime political advocate of the Palestinian agenda. In the wake of the explosion on the Gaza beach, Comrade Grossman lept to the conclusion that Israel had "once again" intentionally murdered innocent Palestinian civilians by firing at civilians on the beach. Now let us emphasize that even if it HAD been an Israeli shell, the culprits responsible would have been the Palestinian terrorists who were firing mortars and rockets all that day at Israeli civilicans, necessitating return fire. Had the deaths been the result of such return-fire by Israel, then the guilt would have been squarely on the paws of the Hamas. Just as the guilt for civilian deaths in bombing Berlin in 1944 was on the paws of the nazis. Except in this case, it turned out that the deaths were not caused
by an Israeli shell at all, but rather by a Hamas mine or rocket But it was a bit too late for David "Yellow Wind" Grossman. He had already condemned Israel for the deaths in an Op-Ed in Maariv on June 11. Here are some excerpts in translation: David Grossman in Ma'ariv: "We must wake up" [Translated by TOI-staff from Ma'ariv, June 11, 2006] The view of the girl from the gaza beach, whose life was torn to pieces in front of our eyes, must wake us up from a years-long hypnotic slumber. Instead of worrying about "the damage to Israel's image", instead of immediately starting to formulate the automatic, cliche counter-arguments, we should take a good look at our handiwork. It is long overdue for us to notice the slippery slope down which we sliding ourselves, and to start asking which deep abyss lies ahead. And why/ What is it all for? Where did we get by endlessly shooting at "the Qassam launching sites", and by the "detention of wanted terrorists" which takes place night after night in the Occupied Territories, and by the "focused" assassinations which mainly murder innocents? How much security for our future did any of these acts gain us? How long are we going to remain silent and passive in face of a clique of "security" experts -- who turn out to be totally uninspired and incompetent even in the field of their supposed specific expertise! -- is continuing to lead us into the same deadly "loop" in which our lives are trapped already for decades: between blow and retaliation, retaliation and blow. Today it is the girl from Gaza. Tomorrow Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv kids may be paying the price of Palestinian retaliation. The IDF, once a daring army full of original thinking, is already for many years moving like a heavy mindless machine -- hitting again and again at the Palestinians, and managing only to drive ever deeper the feeling of humiliation and fury and the desire for revenge. *** For background on Grossman's political extremism, go to:
Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist,
a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author
of "The Scout." He frequently comments -- both seriously and
satirically -- on Israeli politics and the left wing academic
community. His website address is
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FACING DOWN OUR DEFEATIST LEADERS
Posted by Jake Levi, June 13, 2006. |
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This article was written by Caroline Glick and it appeared today in the Jerusalem Post (www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite? cid=1150035838195&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull). |
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Sunday Palestinian Hamas Authority Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar was in Teheran meeting with his boss, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad reportedly devoted the meeting to reminding Zahar that jihad is the only path for the Palestinians, and demanding that Hamas redouble its attacks against Israel. This report tells us little we don't already know about Hamas and Iran. Since last year, Hamas leaders Zahar and Khaled Mashaal have been traveling to Iran to meet with Ahmadinejad and commanders of Iranian intelligence and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards units on a monthly, twice-monthly and even weekly basis. This meeting merely served to remind us what has been clear for months, namely, that Iran today is the leader of the global jihadist axis. More interesting than the meeting is how Iran and Hamas's chief enemies -- the United States and Israel -- have responded to the war the Iranian-led jihadist axis is waging against them. Two words aptly describe the Bush administration and the Olmert government's responses to the escalating war. They are respectively: appeasement and capitulation. The Bush administration's decision to negotiate directly with Iran over the genocidal mullocracy's race to achieve nuclear capabilities represents the White House's clearest renunciation of everything that President George W. Bush claims to have been fighting against since the September 11 attacks. The Iranian regime, with its openly stated intention to annihilate Israel; its active participation in the war against US-led forces in Iraq; its support and sponsorship of other terror forces fighting US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan; its active subversion of pro-Western regimes throughout the Middle East; its support for anti-US regimes and political forces throughout the world; and its race to acquire intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of attacking the continental US, represents everything that Bush pledged to bring down in the aftermath of the attacks on the US five years ago. THERE HAVE been many attempts to rationalize, justify and excuse the move. Some say it is a result of political distress. It is hard to see why Bush would think that attempting to appease America's worst enemy will placate his political support base. But more important than the reasons for his policy reversal are the content and consequences of his new position. In providing an opening to Teheran, the Bush administration has adopted the policy that former president Jimmy Carter forced down the throat of the Clinton administration in its dealings with the North Korean Stalinists in 1994. Twelve years ago, Carter invited himself to North Korea to "defuse" the crisis the North Koreans had fomented by openly developing nuclear weapons. Since then-president Bill Clinton had no policy for dealing with North Korea, he allowed Carter to negotiate the deal that Bush is now offering Teheran. As then, today in exchange for a "pledge" to stop enriching uranium, the US is willing to give Teheran nuclear fuel, airplanes, spare parts, light water reactors, World Trade Organization membership and US acceptance of the mullocracy as a legitimate regime. There can be no doubt that Carter's deal effectively caused the US to facilitate North Korea's development of nuclear weapons. And now, after refusing for five years to adopt an Iran policy, Bush has been convinced by the likes of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to follow the Europeans' lead in appeasing the mullahs. For all that the nuclearized Pyongyang threatens its neighbors, North Korea is still less dangerous than Iran. Unlike Pyongyang, Teheran sees itself as a contender for global supremacy. It has terror cells all over the globe capable of striking Western targets at a moment's notice. Aside from that, Iran has already committed itself to using the nuclear bombs it is now building to destroy Israel and bring America and Europe to their knees. AFTER RICE announced Washington's adoption of the EU's appeasement policy, Iran wasted no time repeatedly humiliating America. Last Thursday Ahmadinejad bragged that the US offer showed America had been defeated. The IAEA revealed that since the US made the offer, Iran intensified its uranium enrichment operation. The Sunday Telegraph reported that Iran has yet another secret nuclear site which is dedicated to military grade uranium enrichment. To all this President Bush has responded with more appeasement. He says that Iran has weeks to decide whether to accept the US offer. The administration is backing Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar's refusal to bring an Iran sanctions bill -- already passed overwhelmingly in the House of Representatives and sponsored by 61 senators -- to a vote. So rather than fighting Iran, the administration is fighting its most loyal supporters while advancing the policy of its most ardent detractors. THE OLMERT government in Jerusalem similarly refuses to recognize that a war is being actively waged against Israel. Olmert's refusal to accept the reality of war is even more unjustifiable than the Bush administration's because while Americans haven't been attacked where they live since September 11, every day Israelis are attacked in their homes. Against the backdrop of the intensification of the Palestinian rocket attacks on southern Israel, Sderot's Mayor Eli Moyal showed the absurdity of the government's willful blindness when Sunday he presented Olmert with the only choice he has. As Moyal put it, Olmert can continue to ignore the war and so turn the bombarded town of Sderot into a ghost town, or he can fight the war and turn Beit Hanoun in Gaza -- from which the rockets raining down on Sderot and surrounding communities are being launched -- into a ghost town. That is, it is us or them, as simple as that. To this the government responded with denial and surrender declarations. Olmert and his equally inexperienced, weak-kneed, ideologically blinded Defense Minister Amir Peretz and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni claim that they are sending Hamas a clear signal by doing nothing. And what are they signaling? That if Hamas doesn't shape up, Israel will give it Judea and Samaria and parts of Jerusalem. AS TO Iran, according to a report over the weekend in The Forward, in his recent meetings with the American Jewish leadership, Olmert urged them to lower their profile on Iran because his government doesn't want the issue to be perceived as an Israeli issue. And so, most Jewish groups, including AIPAC, have not publicly criticized the administration's adoption of Europe's appeasement policy. As Jess Hordes, the Anti-Defamation Leagues Washington affairs director, told the Forward, "Looking down the abyss at the choices, which, in their starkest terms, are either accepting Iran as a nuclear power or attacking militarily, I think people are looking to see whether or not a third way can be found to achieve the same purpose." By the same token, Israeli diplomats in New York and Washington have admitted that their activities today are largely dedicated to convincing American Jewish leaders to support the Olmert plan to surrender Judea and Samaria to Hamas. In 1943 when the evidence of the destruction of European Jewry became incontrovertible, some strident Zionists in the US -- most notably Peter Bergson and Ben Hecht -- launched a massive campaign to try to force the Roosevelt administration to do something to save the Jews of Europe. The organized Jewish leadership, led by Steven Wise, did everything it could to delegitimize their efforts. According to the copiously documented account of these events in Rafael Medoff's history, Militant Zionism in America, Wise, like the leaders of the Labor Zionist movement, didn't want the war to be seen as a Jewish issue and didn't want to alienate the White House by crying out too loudly for European Jews. Today, as Iran moves closer to committing a second Holocaust, how are American Jewish organizations spending their time? Aside from supporting the administration and the Olmert government, leading American Jewish organizations including the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Federation of New York and the Joint Distribution Committee have joined forces with the far-left New Israel Fund and announced their intention to fund Israeli Arab organizations. There is no doubt that as the leadership of Israel and the US lose their collective will to reconcile themselves to the reality of war, it falls on the shoulders of private citizens to tell them that they are wrong. Iran has been at war with the US and Israel since 1979 and today it has a leadership committed to advancing this war by destroying Israel and bringing America to its knees. In light of this danger, and in view of the clear lessons of the Holocaust, it is an act of cowardice and immorality for those who recognize the dangers to take a back seat to leaders who refuse to stand up for their countries. As Moyal said, it is time to face the facts. There is no middle way. You cannot nuance genocidal foes bent on your destruction and defeat. Contact Jake Levi at jlevi_us@yahoo.com |
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THE NAHALAL FORUM: THE MOVEMENT FOR ERETZ ISRAEL
Posted by Yael and Yair Aron, June 13, 2006. | |
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They are the children and grandchildren of the "Halutzim"; the ones who dried the swamps, built roads with their bare hands; turned barn land to a lush blooming one; built communities in Eretz Israel, in far secluded places. The history of Eretz Israel in the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century is full of stories of Jewish people coming home, returning to the land of our forefathers, not in order to spend their last days on earth there, but to reconstruct, build, erect, forge, and bring about a new life to the disgraced, dishonored, putrid, and barren land. Their mission was to renew the prosperous Jewish life in Eretz Israel. The Halutzim turned Emek Izrael, once a swamp, into a green, prosperous farmland, a land full of Kibbutzim and Moshavim thriving off the land. From Metula to Eilat they have been there. Some came with families and children; most, however, came as teenagers, equipped only with the knowledge that Eretz Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people, and that it is time for the Jewish people to return and rebuild it. Many died from Malaria, Yellow Fever, heatstroke, suicides, Arab gangs, and so forth. Some left as they could not tolerate the harsh conditions; some back to Europe, some to the United State. They call themselves "The Nahalal Forum". Nahalal was the first moshav to be built in Emek Izrael. They grew up knowing that each one has to do their duty to Eretz Israel and the State of Israel. Each one was in the IDF, each one contributed to the security, building and prosperity of the Land of Israel and the state of Israel. Although you have not seen their names lauded in the business sections or the social columns of the newspapers, they are hard working dedicated people. Each one trusted the leaders and politicians to do what is in the best interests to the Land of Israel and the State of Israel. That trust and belief was shattered with Sharon's evacuation plan from Gush Katif. At first they did not believe it will come to be, but as the plan progressed, they realized they had to react. None of them knew what lay ahead. A call went out for people to come and talk about the seriousness implications of the evacuation plan, the consequences this plan will have on the immediate safety, and future existence of the state of Israel as a Jewish state. From that meeting The Nahalal Forum came to be. In the fight to save Gush Katif communities, they have walked in the demonstration of Kfar Mimon. They were there inside the compound when the soldiers and the police closed around them and in Gush Katif among different communities when the soldiers and the police evacuated the people and destroyed the prosperous district. They have worked closely with others to help the people of the communities ever since. They were in Amona when the soldiers and policemen came. They were in the houses and saw the soldiers and police at 'work'. Since the night of the meeting in Nahalal, they have been in the forefront campaign to stop the different organizations who work to uproot every farm, settlement, and community in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. For many years organizations, which are being heavily funded by NGO and European countries -- France, Norway, Germany to name a few - have been working to brainwash Israeli Public into surrendering Eretz Israel to the Arabs. They started their mission not realizing what they face; they did not realize the tremendous task in front of them. In the Nahalal Forum's first meeting they pledged their own money to "cover Expanses," not realizing what they need to finance. Ever since, they have been emptying their saving accounts and now are at the end of their financial means. They need our help in order to unite all groups and people under the "MOVEMENT FOR ERETZ ISRAEL" flag, and take it a step further from being an ideological non-secretarial manifest which was written by Natan Alterman in September of 1967, written and signed by: intellectuals, Army commanders, members of Kibbutzim, Moshavim, Holocaust survivors, founding fathers, and mothers of the State of Israel. Help them rebuild the Jewish State. Help them bring security, safety, and dignity to the people of the State who suffer every day from the actions of a defiled and corrupt government, one that wishes to forcefully deport the people of Israel from the state of Israel. Help them fight against the transfer of "The Land of Zion and Yerushalaim" to the Arabs in "formal legal act" which is, in essence, giving up our eternal and legal rights over the Land of Israel. In recognizing willingly and lawfully the Arabs right over the Land of Israel, we relinquish the Jewish people's rights. Help them! Support the YAD TABENKIN CONGRESS, June 15, 2006, 7:00 PM in the Ideological Seminary of the Kibbutz Movement, in Ramat Ef'Al. For further information and to show your support, e-mail: In Israel:
In The United States:
Donation are most welcome. In Israel:
In The United States:
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FOR ERETZ-ISRAEL We are committed to our entire land, to our peoples, past and future, as one. No government in the State of Israel is entitled to relinquish any part of the Land of Israel. The under signed will bring about the realization of these principles. They perceive the involvement of the public for the completion of these principles, and developing means and methods to accomplish it, a central objective at this time. Natan Alterman,
Prof. Yohanan Aharoni,
Y'akov Orland,
Dr. Israel Eldad,
Yehudah Burla,
Brigadier-General, Eliyahu Ben Hur,
Rachel Yanaeit,
Ben Zvi Zrubavel Gilad, (Kibbutz Ein Harod),
Uri Zvi Grinberg,
Haim Hazaz,
Dr. Zeev Vilnaei,
Haim Guri,
Yosef Tabenkin,
Moshe Tabenkin,
Brigadier-General Dan Tolkovsky,
Brigadier-General Avraham Yoffe,
Rivkah Katzenelson Eliezr Livneh,
Beni Marshak,
Prof. Dov Sadan SH"Y,
Agnon Yitzchak Tzukernam(Antak),
Tzviah Tzukerman, (Kibbutz Givat Hashlosha),
TZvi Shiloach, (Kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot),
Yitzchak Shalev,
Moshe Shamir,
Colonel Yehudah Prihar,
Colonel Yehoshuah, Verbin Aharon Hareuveni,
Dr. Arieh Harel,
Eliezr Livneh,
Oved Ben Ami,
Menahem Dorman,
Asher Ben Haim,
Rav Dr. Zvi Harkavi,
Yshaayahu Ben Zion,
Dan Hillel,
Dr. Reuven Hecht,
Dr. Haim Yachil,
(Kibbutz Givaat Brener),
Reuven (Asi) Yoffe,
Michael Cabiri,
David Koren,
Moshe Moshkovitz,
Prof. Harel Fish,
Avraham Kariv,
Ariel Renen
(Moshav Nahallal),
(Kibbutz Mashuot Yitzchak),
(Kibbutz Gesher Haziv),
(Kibbutz Hamadiah),
Dr. Avner Shaki,
Dr. Tamar Shevi,
Gershon Shofnam,
Israel Shinboim,
Yariv Shapirah,
Eliezr Shefer,
Efraim Ben Haim
(Kibbutz Glil Yam),
(Kibbutz Givat Haim Meuhad)
Contact the Arons at yyaron@prtc.net
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NY TIMES PRO-ISLAMIC FEATURE ARTICLES; ABBAS MAKES A FOOL OF OLMERT;
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 13, 2006. |
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One wouldn't know that the US is under siege by Islamic terrorists, from NY Times feature articles, such as on page one of May 27. Lacking perspective and balance, these articles are all from the Muslim point of view. Where is the American point of view? All the colorful interviews are with Muslims -- they complain. Police make muted statements -- they are on the defensive. Yet the police protect us from the Muslims. The article follows up on the recent conviction of a Muslim in Brooklyn for having plotted to blow up New York subways. It emphasizes Muslim apprehension, in all its paranoia and propaganda about police informants among them, as if surveillance is not justified and as if they live in a police state (which is where they came from). In reality, many of them hate our free society and wish to murder enough of us so we let them impose their failed values on our still vibrant society. The newspaper does our country a disservice by making the problem seem to be police surveillance and not the many plots that such surveillance uncovers. Our country cannot rally to its own defense when it supposes itself to be the guilty party. The effect of such reporting is to cow the police into cooperating with the Muslims in a naïve way that undermines law enforcement and public support for fighting back. In the US, there has been a lot of terrorism and building up for terrorism and subversion. This is primarily a Muslim phenomenon. It behooves Muslim immigrants to acknowledge the significant presence among them of Islamist preachers (in most mosques), organizations, propagandists, fundraisers, and gunmen. They, but more so the Times, should not pretend that the Islamo-fascist ideology is far removed from the general Muslim approval of intolerance and desire for dominance. Jihad is an obligation by all the faithful and not just by Islamo-fascists. I am thankful for such ethnic profiling and surveillance as there is. I would root out the problem by rooting out the whole population that nourishes it. Many people think that would be going too far, though they are not aware how far the Muslims want to go. The Times gives short shrift to how the US should defend itself. THE ETHICS OF THE ANTI-AMERICANS June Commentary describes the contemporary, widespread anti-Americanism as a mainly ignorant and emotional retreat from the responsibility to defend civilization and a supposition of world citizenship without realizing that parts of the world are out to get them. It is much like antisemitism. The analysis should have put the Europeans on the spot, by challenging them to show how their international views are more ethical than America's. They rarely join the US in opposing injustice. They have fewer scruples about doing business with tyrants. (This is not to claim the US is perfect.) JORDAN, FIRST? Zarqawi plans to take over Jordan, as a base for attacking Israel. His initial attacks in Jordan have aroused resentment against him, for he killed many civilians. (They're only supposed to kill Israeli civilians?) However, there is no Jordanian nationality, the youth are alienated from their society, and the feeling is that even Hamas and other Muslim Brotherhood organizations are insufficiently radical. The experience in warfare gained by Jordanians in Iraq may endanger the monarchy (IMRA, 5/25). Now consider Olmert's plan to withdraw from most of Judea-Samaria. If he gives the terrorist P.A. a common border with Jordan, the P.A. would be able to assist in overthrowing the Jordanian monarchy in favor of a more radical regime. OLMERT PRAISES ABBAS & ABBAS MAKES A FOOL OF HIM Abbas is said to be a moderate, the foil for Hamas. He presents himself to the West as anti-terrorist and pro- peace (as in a recent speech in Europe). The West is so eager for some Arab to negotiate peace with, that they accept his lip service to them, rather than what he trains his people to do, which is to wage war. PM Olmert called Abbas a "very decent human being" who is "opposed to terror." Two days later, Abbas called Palestinian Arab serial killers in Israeli prisons, "our heroes." He never has condemned actual terrorism as immoral, only as inconvenient at present (Artuz-7, 5/26.) As if opposing Hamas on something basic, Abbas is challenging it to adopt or accept a referendum on a self-styled peace proposal by the P.A. Arab prisoners in Israel. Peace proposed? The main points are: (1) Confiscate terrorists' weapons only if those weapons are not used against Israel; (2) Release all the prisoners (who committed crimes against humanity and although half the released prisoners resume terrorism); (3) Admit into Israel all descendants of alleged Arab refugee families (so they can form the majority, take over, abolish the Jewish state, end the Jewish right of return, dispossess the Jews, and probably kill them (IMRA, 5/26). The prisoners' manifesto is a rehashing of the usual Arab plan for conquest. But the West initially welcomed it as if it were a peace plan. Journalists should check the facts first, and officials should read the documents first. A similar plan was proposed by S. Arabia (with help from Thomas Friedman). That plan, too, was touted by the West as constructive. But it wasn't constructive. It suggested Israeli concessions for promises the Arabs customarily break. HOW ISRAELI POLITICIANS DEAL WITH ISSUES A Member of Knesset from Olmert's Party said that the PM would retain Hebron, but then admitted he did not know what boundaries Olmert had in mind (Arutz-7, 5/26). END OF BUSH DOCTRINE By resuming diplomatic relations with Libya, the US ended the Bush Doctrine of promoting democracy. The US is afraid it would pave the way for Islamist takeover. As a result, Arab dictators in Libya and Egypt have cracked down all the harder on their (alleged) pro-democracy critics, without repercussions from the US. The US continues its huge annual subsidy of Egypt. The US has ceased most of its efforts with them as well as with China. The revolution in Lebanon is failing, as Sec. Rice met with its President, who is a Syrian stooge. Reformers whom the US encouraged to protest for democracy feel let down by the US. The US does have leverage with some of those countries. The US should not give up. Sec. Rice could have snubbed Lebanon's President (Barry Rubin and Danielle Pletka, L.A. Times, 5/26, MEForum, 5/26). The US has let down and exposed natural allies before, as with Israel repeatedly. How much the US can do, however, is not clear. China, for example, is a proud super-power. The US cannot command it to reform. Nor can the US expect many countries to follow its lead, any more. The US must pick its issues carefully. WHAT KIND OF PEOPLE ARE THE PALESTINIAN ARABS? What values have the western Palestinian Arabs? An offhand remark in the NY Times is indicative. Correspondent Steven Erlanger observed that the terrorist serial killers, held in Israeli prisons, "hold great status" in their society (5/27, A6). The Arabs signed agreements not to fight and to negotiate. They break their agreements and walk out of negotiations because they want everything, leaving nothing to negotiate about. These terrorist prisoners fight a war of aggression and chiefly against civilians. By honoring those prisoners, their whole people demonstrate depravity and unworthiness of statehood. THE IRONY OF ANTISEMITISM Just as almost the whole world is taking up the ridiculous notion that "the Jews" are dominating the US and the world, a June Commentary analysis explains how the Jewish people is dissolving itself (Steven M. Cohen & Jack Wertheimer). An example the authors might have given is Charles Krauthammer. He writes about Israeli existentialist issues, and he heads a major Jewish organization. He just donated $100 million to a hospital. We need such donors to contribute Jewish glue. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
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ISRAELI "APARTHEID"?
Posted by Steven Plaut, June 13, 2006. |
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1. Allow us to introduce Lisa Bloom, a leftist feminist lawyer. Writing in the Haaretz business section (piece not available online), Sistuh Lisa has published a headline entitled "Israel is as Racist as the American South in the 60s". Its theme is that Israel is an apartheid society (her word). She saw fit to publish this the very week when anti-Semites all over the globe are organizing boycotts of "racist" Israel. She appears to be well connected, as I found several web references to her testifying at the Knesset. Her argument? She begins by telling the sob stories of an Arab who was turned down for a job at a cafe, and of a women she claims applied for a job and was turned down, supposedly because she was a woman. Both the Arab and the woman sued under Israel's anti-discrimination laws and won. One would think this proves how progressive Israeli society is, right? Wrong! Bloom leaps to the conclusion that both cases prove that Israel is an "apartheid" society "like the American South in the 60s", where Bloom herself grew up. She proposes that everyone fight Israeli "racism" by boycotts. She means boycotts of stores and services that refuse to serve ethnic/gender groups, and I defy you to find any like that in Israel. But of course most people will not read the small print and will conclude that yet another Israeli gonzo leftist is calling for a boycott of "apartheid Israel". Finally, after celebrating Israel's anti-discrimination laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex or ethnicity, Bloom goes on to demand discrimination on the basis of sex and ethnicity in the name of affirmative action. Meaning affirmative apartheid. 2. Glimmerings of Sanity on the Left?
At first blush, the Euston Manifesto doesn't seem explosive. Conceived in a London pub and hashed out online, and signed by left-wing, mostly British academics and journalists, it declares itself for democracy and freedom of ideas, and against racism and terror. OK, great. Torn by the Iraq war and the fight against terrorism, Britain's left, like some in the U.S., could use a few reminders of what is at stake. Yet since its unveiling in April, the Euston Manifesto has generated fierce debate. On the kinder end, Daniel Finkelstein, in the Times of London, called it "a gigantic waste of time and energy" that seeks to salvage an unsalvageable left. Brendan O'Neill, meanwhile, wrote in the Guardian that "the Euston group and al Qaeda are cut from the same cloth." Just what could be so provocative? Among other things, the manifesto battles the all-sins-are-equal attitude epitomized by Mr. O'Neill. To wit, the Euston group says it "reject(s) the double standards with which much self-proclaimed progressive opinion now operates," which leads, for instance, to "grotesque public comparison of Guantanamo with the Gulag." Its stand on racism includes fighting anti-Semitism, not a popular cause around fashionable London dinner tables. It is equally comprehensive on terror, "which cannot be justified by the argument that it is done in a cause that is just." Norm Geras, a scholar of Marxism and professor emeritus at the University of Manchester, was one of the manifesto's principal drafters. By phone, he told us that he got fed up with people trying to pardon suicide bombers. "There's nothing wrong with trying to understand things in a genuine way, but some voices are making excuses," he said. One of the most notorious was Tariq Ali in the Guardian on the day after last July's London bombings killed 52. "The cause of these bombs is the unstinting support given by New Labour and its prime minister to the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq," he wrote. The manifesto's anti-anti-Americanism has also stirred debate. The U.S. "is the home of a strong democracy with a noble tradition behind it and lasting constitutional and social achievements to its name." Nice to hear. Especially as it must come as news to the readers of the New Statesman, the house organ of Britain's highbrow left, which first published the manifesto. So Britain now appears to have a hawkish intellectual left, as does America in some small pockets, to complement a Labour Prime Minister who pioneered "humanitarian intervention" from Kosovo to Iraq. It's a welcome development; Britain's political debate will benefit from the Eustonites. 3. PRESS RELEASE -- MONDAY, JUNE 12, 2006 Women in Green Co-Chair Ruth Matar and Women in Green Board Member Jacqueline Levisohn, filed a complaint yesterday at the Jerusalem Moriah Police Station against Dana Olmert, the daughter of the Israeli Prime Minister. Dana Olmert, together with her radical leftist friends, in a demonstration last Saturday Night, called Army Chief of Staff, Dan Halutz, a "murderer" and, according to news reports, sang "long live the "intifada"! Women In Green Co-Chair Nadia Matar has been indicted, and accused of "insulting a public official." She compared Disengagement Authority Head Jonathan Bassi to the "Judenrat" of Berlin in 1942. Her trial is scheduled to commence on Wednesday, June 14, 2006 at the Shalom Court in Jerusalem, at 10:00 AM. Will Attorney General Mazuz likewise feel compelled to indict Dana Olmert and her left-wing friends for the insulting epithets they hurled at the Army Chief of Staff, Dan Halutz, a Public Official? Or will it make a difference that she is the daughter of the Israeli Prime Minister? (Afterword -- Some people have begun calling Ehud Olmert Abu Dana -- SP) Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist,
a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author
of "The Scout." He frequently comments -- both seriously and
satirically -- on Israeli politics and the left wing academic
community. His website address is
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HA'ARETZ POLL: ONLY 37% OF ISRAELIS SUPPORT OLMERT'S UNILATERAL
WITHDRAWAL PLAN
Posted by Morton A. Klein, June 13, 2006. |
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A June 7 poll conducted for the Ha'aretz newspaper shows that only 37% of Israelis support Ehud Olmert's plan to carry out further unilateral withdrawals in Judea and Samaria, while 56% of the Israeli public opposes the plan. The poll of 515 adult Israelis (including Israeli Arabs) was supervised by Professor Camille Fuchs of Tel Aviv University. It is also found that only 35% of Israelis approve of Ehud Olmert's performance as Prime Minister, an unusually low result after only one month in office for a new government (Ha'aretz, June 9). ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, "This latest poll shows that the majority of the Israeli public does not believe that a policy of unilateral withdrawals is the one for Israel to adopt. The negative consequences of Israel's Gaza withdrawal -- increased arms smuggling into Gaza, increased rocket attacks from northern Gaza, the infiltration of Al-Qaeda and Iranian personnel into the territory -- speak strongly against the idea of handing over more territory to the Hamas/Palestinian Authority. Israelis are afraid that further unilateral withdrawals in Judea and Samaria will only bring Iranian and Al-Qaeda personnel as well as missiles, katyushas and mortars up to Israel's major population centers, including Jerusalem, while civilian aircraft taking off and landing at Ben-Gurion airport will be within the terrorists' range. "This poll is also a strong refutation of those who argued immediately after the Israeli elections that the results showed decisive support for Olmert's unilateral withdrawal plan. Even at the time, this was obviously incorrect. Olmert's Kadima party received the support of only 21% of voting Israelis and of all Israeli citizens, including those not voting, only 13% voted for Kadima. There was virtually an even split between the left of center pro-withdrawal parties and the right of center anti -withdrawal parties, with the left gaining 53 seats (Kadima, 29, Labor 19, Meretz 5) while the right gained 50 (Likud 12, Shas 12, Yisrael Beitenu, 11, National Union/National Religious Party 9, United Torah Judaism 6). This was hardly a strong endorsement of Olmert's plan in an election in which domestic issues predominated. "The strongest indication at the time of the lack of strong support for Olmert's plan was the fact that in the final weeks of the election campaign when Olmert started emphasizing his intention to carry out unilateral withdrawals, Kadima's consistently strong showing in polls (over 40 seats) fell precipitously to only 29 seats on election day. If the Israelis really wanted unilateral withdrawals, Olmert's support would have strengthened in the last few weeks before elections, not dramatically weakened. This latest poll now confirms that the majority of the Israeli public is opposed to Olmert's plan. Major figures who have criticized or opposed Olmert's unilateral withdrawal plan include former Israel Defense Force (IDF) Chief-of-Staff, Lieutenant-General Moshe Yaalon, outgoing Israeli National Security Council (NSC) head Major-General Giora Eiland, former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Defense Minister Moshe Arens, former Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman, Yuval Steinitz, current Tourism Minister and number two Labor Party figure, Yitzhak Herzog, Housing Minister and senior Kadima figure, Meir Shitreet, former CIA Director, R. James Woolsey, former Israeli ambassador, Zalman Shoval, Center for Security Policy President, Frank Gaffney, Mideast scholar Daniel Pipes, Jerusalem Post Managing Editor Caroline Glick, leading Israeli journalist for the left-wing Ha'aretz newspaper, Ari Shavit, and 2005 Nobel Prize Winner in Economics, Professor Robert Aumann." Morton A. Klein is Nation President of Zionist Organization of America (ZOA). The ZOA (www.zoa.org), founded in 1897, is the oldest pro-Israel organization in the United States. The ZOA works to strengthen U.S.-Israel relations, educates the American public and Congress about the dangers that Israel faces, and combats anti-Israel bias in the media and on college campuses. Its past presidents have included Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis and Rabbi Dr. Abba Hillel Silver. |
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"NEVER AGAIN", AGAIN!
Posted by Steven Shamrak, June 13, 2006. |
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After the Shaoah -- Holocaust the words "Never Again" had a special and powerful meaning for the Jewish people. The Holocaust survivors, who had just arrived in Palestine, went to battle against well-armed Arabs with wooden sticks, due to the lack of weapons. Jews all over the word vowed not to allow the systematic killing of the Jews again. Almost sixty years passed. The words have become just another empty and meaningless slogan, that politicians and apathetic community leaders are using during feel-good ceremonies. The unimaginable has happened! The Israeli government assumed the role of the concentration camp Capo and is collaborating with its enemies. Instead of pursuing the Jewish National goal, the return of all Jewish land -- Eretz Israel. The government is preparing ground for giving up more Jewish land to the enemies who are killing and ready to kill even more Jews. As the first step, Jews were deported from Gaza. Thousands of Jews were uprooted. Again! All communities were destroyed, again! Viable and successful businesses were ruined, again! Synagogues were destroyed, again. Jews were stripped of their dignity, again but this time by their own government. What a shameful crime! Months have passed and people are still living in temporary accommodations in the state of desolation, disillusionment, isolation and shock! At the same time, the government has done it's ugly best to astrocyte and discredit decent people -- modern heroes of the Jewish nation. The deportation of Jews from Gaza was conducted under the pretence that it would reduce the cost of the fight against Arab terror and save Jewish lives. During the last few months Katusha rockets began landing on Israel soil. The Kassam rockets have become a routine daily occurrence. Both Fatah and Hamas have intensified their attacks, in order to win the 'heart' of Arab supporters. Embolden by Israel's 'weakness' Hisbollah renewed it's attacks on the North of Israel. Where is the cost saving? Where is self-dignity? There is none whatsoever! All of this is completely disregarded by the Olmerts government. New stupidity is emerging. It is called "Convergent" or, the latest name, "Realignment" plan. This is another plan leading to Jewish self-destruction. Only this time, up to 90 thousand Jews will be deported from the Jewish heartland -- Judea and Samaria. And, almost 90% of the Israel's population will be in the cross-fire between Gaza and West Bank, reachable by the rockets. This is the new Holocaust in the making! The questions must be asked: When is "Enough is Enough"? When will Jews realise that we are being systematically robbed of our rightful inheritance -- Eretz Israel -- the Land of Israel? When will we say "Never Again!" and mean it! When will we become the proud owners of our land and our destiny? Steven Shamrak was born in the former Soviet Union (USSR) and participated in the Moscow Zionist "refusenik" movement. For the last 3 years, he has been publishing internet editorial letters on the Arab-Israeli conflict -- independently, not as a member of any organization or political movement. He can be reached by email at StevenShamrak@mail2world.com |
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ISLAMIST THREATS TO DUTCH POLITICIAN BRING CHILL AT HOME
Posted by Israela Goldstein, June 12, 2006. |
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Ms. Hirsi Ali Quits Parliament, Plans to Resettle in U.S. After Losing Safe House a Debate Over Extremism This article was written by Andrew Higgins and it appeared in the Wall Street journal May 17, 2006. It is archived at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114782915681854954.html |
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THE HAGUE -- Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been threatened repeatedly with "execution" by Islamist extremists. She lives in an apartment with bulletproof windows, and is driven to work at the Dutch Parliament by armed guards, who vary the route to outfox would-be hit men. But an unexpected menace emerged closer to home: her own neighbors. They have fought to evict her, complaining that the presence of a well-known terrorist target in their luxury apartment tower in this Dutch city has upset their family lives and reduced the value of their property. "Once this lady leaves, the problem is no longer there," says Ger Verhagen, a retired executive who owns a place two floors above the hunted politician. He says he has nothing personal against Ms. Hirsi Ali. But along with other residents, he wants to banish the fears stirred by the proximity of Holland's most acid -- and most frequently threatened -- critic of Islam. Yesterday, Ms. Hirsi Ali's neighbor got his wish. Three weeks after a Dutch court ordered her out of the building in response to complaints from Mr. Verhagen and other residents, she resigned from Parliament and said she would leave Holland altogether. Her decision follows a cascade of problems: angry neighbors, a government threat to revoke her citizenship and, more generally, growing public disenchantment with her denunciations of both radical Islam and more conventional Muslim doctrines. The travails of Ms. Hirsi Ali, 36 years old, raise questions about how Europe, seeking calm rather than confrontation, is grappling with the challenges posed by Islamic extremism in its midst. Born in Somalia and raised in Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya, Ms. Hirsi Ali says the attitude of her neighbors smacks of World War II-style "appeasement." Others say they sympathize with her predicament but fault her for polarizing society with her attacks on Islamic custom as backward and incompatible with Western values. In late April, a court in The Hague gave Ms. Hirsi Ali four months to vacate her apartment. Her departure, judges ruled, was necessary to protect the "human rights" of her fearful neighbors. The Dutch state, which owns the apartment and charges her about $1,500 a month in rent, has appealed the decision. Announcing the end of her career in Dutch politics yesterday, she cited the ruling as the direct cause. "It is difficult to work as a parliamentarian if you have nowhere to live," she said. Before her announcement, which touched off a political firestorm, the eviction order had stirred little public outrage. On state television last week, a satirical talk-show host joked about it, asking a guest -- the Dutch lawyer of an Islamist militant who killed filmmaker Theo van Gogh in 2004 -- whether Ms. Hirsi Ali would be safest living in a mosque, at Guantanamo Bay or "six feet under in a garden." The audience roared with laughter. Ms. Hirsi Ali, who gave a speech in Berlin earlier this year entitled "The Right to Offend," lamented her eviction as a triumph of self-interest over solidarity. In a trademark flash of provocation, she says it could even shed light on the debate "over what people did during the Second World War." She says caustically: "My neighbors seem to confirm the critical view that very few Dutch people were brave enough" during the Nazi occupation. Many Europeans initially rallied to President George W. Bush's "with-us-or-against-us" approach to combating extremism after the bombings in Madrid in early 2004 and the subsequent murder in Amsterdam of Mr. van Gogh, the filmmaker. Since then, however, this united front has narrowed in many parts of Europe to a populist battle against immigration. Some now see Islamist violence and the ideology that fuels it as a threat that can be tamed, or at least kept at a distance, by avoiding provocation. Although Ms. Hirsi Ali has not yet specified what she will do next, a spokesman for the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank based in Washington, said yesterday that she "has been offered the position of resident fellow." A colleague of Ms. Hirsi Ali's said she intends to accept the position and move to the U.S. later this year. Earlier this month, she joined Vice President Dick Cheney and others in Philadelphia to honor Bernard Lewis, the British-born scholar who coined the phrase "clash of civilizations" and helped shape White House thinking about the Middle East after 9/11. She also spoke at Harvard University and the New York Public Library. When she returned to Holland last weekend, Ms. Hirsi Ali received a different reception -- a stormy debate over whether she should be stripped of her Dutch citizenship and deported. The clamor followed a documentary broadcast last week in which she expanded upon an earlier admission that she had lied on a 1992 application for refugee status. Ms. Hirsi Ali said yesterday that the country's immigration minister, a nominal ally, had told her Monday that her passport, granted in 1997, would be annulled. Many Dutch consider her brave but disruptive and too confrontational. She had worked closely with the controversial Mr. van Gogh before his murder, writing and narrating his last film, "Submission," which infuriated Muslims and which many non-Muslims considered gratuitously offensive. A polemic against Islamic attitudes toward women, the short film featured semi-naked actresses, with passages from the Quran scrawled on their bodies. She clashed recently with a leader of her own center-right Liberal Party, whom she branded a "reactionary," and has been pilloried by politicians on the left, who mock her fury but fear her tart tongue. Many moderate Muslims detest her; radicals want her dead. "She spits in the face of all Muslims," says Jan Schoonenboom, the head of a government-sponsored research project on Islam. He says he regrets the eviction campaign but says she's partly to blame for stirring Muslim anger. In April, his think tank, the Scientific Council for Government Policy, issued a report that found no fundamental clash between Islamic and Western values and condemned a "climate of confrontation and stereotypical thinking." The Council, which helps set Dutch policy, urged Holland and other European countries to reach out to Islamist groups abroad that have been involved in terrorism, such as Hamas and Hezbollah. "They're just sticking their heads in the sand," responds Ms. Hirsi Ali, who dismisses the report as a "political pamphlet to suit the dreams of people who want to believe there is not a problem." Across Europe, dozens of people are now in hiding or under police protection because of threats from Muslim extremists. Dutch police say politicians reported 121 death threats last year. The number this year will likely be much higher. Geert Wilders, a right-wing member of parliament who also lives in a high-security apartment owned by the state, says he has received 120 menacing emails and letters since January. One of the latest reads: "Oh you cursed infidel! Don't think you are safe from our mighty organization....It is our wish to kill you by decapitation. Your infidel blood will flow freely on cursed Dutch streets!" In Germany, several researchers, journalists and members of Parliament receive police protection because of threats by radical Muslims. Hans-Peter Raddatz, an Islamic-studies expert under police protection, recently moved to the U.S. Flemming Rose, the culture editor of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, is also mulling a move to America, at the urging of friends and security contacts. He set off a global storm by publishing cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. Twelve Danish cartoonists who drew the caricatures are staying out of public for fear of attack. Mr. Rose complains that Europe is going wobbly. At the height of the cartoon furor in February, Danish businessmen who criticized their publication were denounced as traitors to free speech. Since then, a segment of the public, eager for a return to calm, has favored a more conciliatory approach toward Muslim anger, Mr. Rose says. "I think it is very dangerous to give in to intimidation, because it sends a signal: If you threaten enough, we will do as you please," says Mr. Rose. The U.S. has sometimes sent mixed signals as well. During the cartoon uproar, Washington at first denounced the drawings. As the violence grew, it stressed the importance of free speech. Determining how to respond to radical Islam "is the key culture war in Europe," Mr. Rose contends. "This will be the big issue for decades." Europe's large Muslim population has been largely ghettoized. Finding solutions, he says, involves such prickly questions as how to reform welfare systems and how best to absorb immigrants. Ms. Hirsi Ali first got police protection in 2002 and then went into hiding in November 2004, following the murder in Amsterdam of Mr. van Gogh by a second-generation Dutchman of Moroccan descent. The killer plunged into Mr. van Gogh's chest a long knife, which pinned to the corpse a rambling and venomous note addressed to Ms. Hirsi Ali. It vowed that she, too, would die. Raised as a devout Muslim, Ms. Hirsi Ali renounced her faith after arriving in Holland and now calls herself a "Muslim atheist." She says she fled here to escape a forced marriage to a distant relative living in Canada. Her past, she says, allows her to understand what drives the murderous passions of those who want her dead. As a youth, she says, she supported calls by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini for the murder of Salman Rushdie, author of "The Satanic Verses," a novel she then judged blasphemous. Fearing for their lives after Mr. van Gogh's murder, Ms. Hirsi Ali and Mr. Wilders, her fellow legislator, shuttled between army barracks, other state installations and the homes of friends and supporters abroad. As the threats continued, the Dutch government began scouting for private properties in which to safely house them. For Ms. Hirsi Ali, it purchased a spacious apartment for more than $1.1 million. The Dutch counterterrorism agency installed bulletproof glass, alarms and other devices. Her "high-security residence" was supposed to be a secret. Mr. Verhagen, the retired businessman, says he suspected something was afoot when the apartment's previous owner announced gleefully that he'd sold his property, but said he couldn't reveal the new owner's identity. In April 2005, Ms. Hirsi Ali moved in. She rejoiced in having a home again. "I brought furniture. I set up my desk and my computer. I started to cook again for the first time since the murder," she says. She also started work on a sequel to "Submission," the film she'd made with Mr. van Gogh and that many blamed for his death. The new movie, which has not yet been shown, takes aim at the treatment of homosexuals in Islamic society. Ms. Hirsi Ali's new neighbors, meanwhile, started to panic. They complained about security guards blocking the elevator and harassing visitors, and about traffic snarls whenever Ms. Hirsi Ali and her security escorts entered their underground parking garage. At a meeting in April last year with a counterterrorism official in a hotel, they angrily criticized the government for bringing danger into their lives and demanded that independent experts review the risk of having Ms. Hirsi Ali as a neighbor. When the government refused to budge, the apartment owners hired a lawyer. A second meeting failed to resolve the standoff. The owners hired security consultants at the Dutch branch of accounting firm Ernst & Young LLP to assess whether Ms. Hirsi Ali might put them all in danger. News of Ms. Hirsi Ali's arrival spread. Dick van Tetterode, a retired doctor who lives in an adjacent building, says he worried briefly about bombs, but decided he'd probably lose only his windows. During a slow afternoon stroll outside Ms. Hirsi Ali's building, the 84-year-old doctor reflected on her predicament and on his own flight from the Nazis during World War II. A student at the time, he spent two years hiding on a Dutch farm. Two of the three people he credits with saving his life were killed by the Germans. Struggling to hold back tears, he says he regrets never thanking their children properly for their fathers' bravery. But Ms. Hirsi Ali's case is different, he says. He admires her conviction, he says, but thinks her rage at Islam belongs in the Middle East and Africa, not the Netherlands. "This is not our fight," he says. Who did what and why during World War II are still touchy questions here. Holland deported 78% of its Jews -- the highest proportion in Western Europe. Among them was Anne Frank, a Jewish girl whose hiding place in Amsterdam was betrayed by a Nazi informant. In June 2005, Ernst & Young's security advisers presented their report to Mr. Verhagen and other apartment owners. The report rated as "high" the risk in having a "high-security residence" in the building, says Mr. Verhagen. "The conclusion was clear: The government made the wrong choice," he says. Ernst & Young confirmed his account of the findings. Mr. Verhagen ordered his five grandchildren to stop visiting. "I felt unsafe in my own home," he says. Eleven of 14 apartment owners backed taking legal action to oust Ms. Hirsi Ali. The politician says she received messages from dissenting owners saying they supported her. In a suit filed late last year, the owners claimed that their security fears, the disruption caused by Ms. Hirsi Ali's bodyguards and the likely damage to property values violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees "respect for private and family life" and the home, and bars "interference by a public authority." The government fought the claim, arguing that the tight security had made the building among the safest in The Hague. It also offered unspecified compensation to offset financial damage. An initial ruling last November went against the owners. Eight of the eleven, determined to get rid of Ms. Hirsi Ali, pressed on. In an April 27 ruling, an appeals court rejected the argument that the risk of declining property values and the long waits for the elevator constituted a violation of human rights. But citing the murder of Mr. van Gogh and threats against Ms. Hirsi Ali, the court ruled that the "more than negligibly small risk" of a terrorist attack violated the European Convention on Human Rights. Although it acknowledged that finding Ms. Hirsi Ali another shelter would be "unquestionably hard," it nonetheless ordered her to move out within four months. The judgment prompted disbelief in some quarters. "Put her in the middle of the Atlantic and then everyone will be safe," joked Kees Lunshof, a newspaper columnist. Others saw more ominous signs. "From a moral point of view, it stinks of cowardice," says Johannes Houwink ten Cate, a professor at Amsterdam University and head of the Institute of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, a Dutch research group. An expert on Holland's treatment of Jews during the Nazi occupation, he says he has "more understanding" for people who betrayed their neighbors out of fear during wartime than for the actions of Ms. Hirsi Ali's well-off neighbors in an era of peace. Her decision to leave the country for the U.S. spares the Dutch government the chore of finding her a new sanctuary. She'll be gone by the court's eviction deadline. "Sad and relieved, I will pack my bags again. I will go," she said at a news conference yesterday. She doesn't begrudge her neighbors their security fears, but says she suspects property prices were their main concern. This blinded them to a bigger peril, she says. "Radical Islam is not just against me. It's against them, too," she maintains. "By having me evicted, the terrorists have won. It makes the situation more dangerous for everyone." Mr. Verhagen, her neighbor, now lives in a different building in a new apartment he purchased before the ruling. His grandchildren visit again, and he's trying to sell his property in Ms. Hirsi Ali's building for more than $1.3 million. Mr. Verhagen says he's "very sad" his former neighbor decided to leave the country but doesn't regret trying to drive her out of her apartment. "I'm happy I'm out of there," he says. |
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OLMERT FLITS ABOUT AN UNFRIENDLY CONTINENT WITH A PERILOUS PROPOSAL
Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, June 12, 2006. |
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Ehud Olmert flits about Europe attempting to convince skeptical leaders that his plan for unilaterally surrendering Israeli land in Judea and Samaria to morphed Jordanians a/k/a Palestinians is a good idea. Of course, European leaders would like the Holocaust trivializer Abu Mazen to have input into this give away, but you can't always get what you want says Ehud. Meanwhile, French popinjays castigate Israel for defending itself too vigorously from rocket attacks originating in Gaza. France "deplores Israel's bombardments on a beach in the Gaza Strip, whose disproportionate character has cost the lives of several civilians and injured many others." Alas, such retaliation can result in tragic deaths to innocent victims, such as occurred on the aforementioned beach that just happens to be 400 yards away from Arab rocket launchers. Might the "outraged" French question why so-called Palestinian authorities allowed citizens to picnic in a war zone created by Arab terrorists, or is that asking too much from leaders that instinctively chastise Israel on any occasion? Furthermore, why does Olmert plead for support of his insane proposal with a nation like England, maintaining universities chomping at the bit to disassociate themselves from Israeli professors, as well as allowing the anti-Semite Ken Livingston to remain mayor of its world-class capital city? Additionally, is not the International Court of "Injustice" at The Hague located in a European city, an institution that distinguished itself by berating Israel for erecting a security barrier to prevent Arab homicide/suicide martyring maniacs from blowing up innocent Jewish men, women, and children? Yet, Olmert traipses about a less than friendly continent, with a proposition that could only result in tsuris for the nation he was elected to steward, hoping to secure its collective blessing. Such a surreal scenario, where an Israeli Prime Minister hawks a scheme that will only weaken his State while bolstering the confidence of Jew/Israel despising Arab terrorists, within a region that salivates to observe a weakened Israel tormented by those Jew/Israel despising Arab terrorists, belongs in a psychology journal dedicated to sadomasochistic dysfunctional human behavior. Meanwhile, Hamas, a terrorist cadre chosen by a landslide majority of morphed Jordanians a/k/a Palestinian voters to lead their newly sovereign enclave, morphed to a crime-ridden cesspool, launches more potentially deadly rockets at Israel. Might Olmert seriously consider this fact while sauntering about Europe and reassess his bizarre land-surrendering obsession? If 70,000 Jewish citizens are evicted from their homes within Judea and Samaria, ceding more land to Hamas thus vastly increasing rocket-launching sites, does this Prime Minister truly believe Israeli citizens will be safer? If he does, is there a psychiatrist available to provide him with a check-up from the neck up? This is serious stuff! Let the protests begin now. Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at luniglicht@snip.net |
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THE PALESTINIANS KILLED THEIR OWN CHILDREN
Posted by The Reality Show, June 12, 2006. |
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This was written by Ethel C. Fenig and appeared in the American
Thinker
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Who could not be moved by the picture of a little girl hysterically crying near her father's body; killed in an explosion, along with others, as the family was enjoying a picnic on the Gaza beach? Now she will forever mourn as it turns out the deadly rockets came from Hamas not the evil Israelis. Israpundit explains: An Israel Defense Forces intelligence officer has confirmed that the explosion that killed eight Palestinians on Friday, was caused by a stockpile of Hamas explosives. "Shortly after we stopped defensive firing at Hamas rocket launch pads which were deployed behind Palestinian human shields, members of Hamas scrambled to fire more rockets at our positions," said Col. M. "We have eyes on every meter of Gaza, from the sky, from the ground and from the sea. One of their rocket tripods collapsed inadvertently setting off an explosion of a stockpile of Qassam rockets. The Palestinians killed their own children. And this was not the first time." Let's repeat that. In addition to killing other innocent Jewish children in schools and buses and shopping malls "The Palestinians killed their own children. And this was not the first time." Meanwhile, the Palestinians, refusing to co-operate with the Israelis, are being observed quickly removing the evidence and clearing the beaches of the bombs and grenades they placed there in anticipation of an Israeli raid to remove the rockets the Arabs are daily pouring down on Israeli homes and schools. Contact The Reality Show at therealityshow@mail.com or visit his blogsite: http://lightonthings.blogspot.com |
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THINK NOW BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE
Posted by Lee Caplan, June 12, 2006. |
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If even Haaretz is publishing something like this, then can there
be any question remaining as to the dangers of Olmert's plan? This
article certainly provides good information for everyone out there to
include in letters and telephone calls to your Congressmen and the
President urging them to oppose Olmert's plan! Tizku lemitzvos.
This was written by Ari Shavit and appeared today in Haaretz
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For five years, Giora Eiland was the most important person on the command bridge of the Israeli ship of state. Both as head of the Israel Defense Forces' Operations Directorate and as head of the National Security Council, Eiland deal with the most important strategic issues that Israel faces. He worked in concert with the country's leaders, doing the groundwork for them and observing them at close range when they made the most significant decisions of the past decade. For this reason, the harsh conclusions he has come to regarding the behavior of Israel's political-military leadership are worrisome. Eiland makes note of a fascinating fact: that every prime minister in the past generation who initiated a foreign policy move was swept into a process with unexpected results. Menachem Begin never imagined that he would cede all of Sinai and "establish" the Palestinian homeland; Yitzhak Rabin never imagined that he would effectively create a "Yasser Arafat state"; and Ehud Barak never imagined that he would agree to give back 95 percent of the West Bank, as well as the Temple Mount. According to the outgoing national security advisor, Ariel Sharon, similarly, did not presume that the limited unilateral measure that he initiated would turn into a comprehensive unilateral one. The unilateralist strategy was never accepted by Sharon, Eiland argues. Had Sharon remained prime minister, he would not be proceeding toward a convergence plan a la Ehud Olmert. Even in his final days as prime minister, Sharon viewed a withdrawal to the 1967 borders as a disaster. In Eiland's view, therefore, the pattern that is emerging is fascinating: One after another, Israeli prime ministers release the genie from the bottle in the belief that they can tame it, but quickly discover that it is the genie that is taming them. What was thought to be reversible turns out to be irreversible. What was planned as a limited operation becomes comprehensive. The moment the ship leaves the harbor without a compass, without a clear destination and without a proper map of the ocean, the strong currents in the international realm exercise their own will upon it. They mock each Israeli leader in his turn, and sweep his ship into remote and hazardous quarters. Eiland has an explanation for the repetition of this pattern of foreign policy failure: It is because Israel has no organized strategic management method. There's no system, he says. There is no critical examination of fundamental assumptions. There is no systematic definition of goals and targets. There is too much reliance on intuition. There is a strong tendency toward improvisation and instant solutions. There is no attempt at beginning-to-end planning. The opposite is true: There is great pressure to reach the finish line quickly without wasting precious time on forethought. And the result? A questionable decision-making process with regard to the definition of the disengagement. A complete lack of decision-making with regard to the declarations on the convergence. A serious foreign policy failure vis-a-vis Iran's nuclear program. The Hamas election surprise and a refusal to confront its significance. A country that is run like a shtetl, not a state. A country where every medium-sized company is managed more responsibly than the state itself. The conclusion is clear: The basic law of the Israeli-Palestinian jungle is that an Israeli withdrawal does not diminish the conflict, but instead exacerbates it. Since any Israeli withdrawal is interpreted by the Palestinians as surrender, it increases their appetite to obtain additional surrenders. The result is not stability, but violence, which under the conditions of the end of the occupation, is liable to become extreme. Eiland is not the first to voice criticism along these lines. He was preceded by Ephraim Levy. He was preceded by Uzi Dayan. They were preceded by most of the important people who preceded them on the command bridge of the Israeli ship of state. But these are not normal times. The decisions that Israel must make in the course of the next year are not ordinary. They are fateful decisions, unlike any that Israel has taken since the decision concerning the Dimona nuclear facility half a century ago. Therefore, this time the harsh comments of the outgoing head of the NSC must not be ignored. His remarks must be taken seriously. They deserve public debate. They must be examined and they must lead to a plan of action. Ehud Olmert and his chief of staff Yoram Turbowicz have permitted a very important public servant to resign. That's their right. But the parting words of this principled public servant must not be ignored. Eiland leaves behind him a challenge to the ruling ideological paradigm. He leaves behind him a series of warnings about the future. But above all, Eiland has commanded us to think. For their sake and for all of our sake, Olmert and Turbowicz must take on that command. The command to think now, to think before it is too late. |
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As a follow-up to the previous email, I just want to share the following piece which provides information from the interview with Mr. Eiland. It is called "Insider reveals shallowness of Sharon-Olmert retreat thinking," and was written June 8, 2006 by Aaron Lerner. Dr. Lerner is Director of IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis) (Mail POB 982 Kfar Sava). IMRA's website address is http://www.imra.org.il Also, I would like to reiterate that when you contact your elected officials, please be sure to stress the issue of American security, how Olmert's plan will endanger us here in America. Lee |
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The Sharon administration never took the time to seriously think through the idea of retreating from the Gaza Strip and never took the time to ponder the consequences of the retreat in order to learn from the experience. By the same token, the Olmert administration has yet to take the time to seriously think through Olmert's idea to carry out additional retreats. No. This isn't the speculation of a critical outsider. They are the shocking revelations of the outgoing head of the National Security Council (NSC), Major General Giora Eiland, the man who planned the technical side of the Gaza retreat for PM Sharon, in a 4 June interview in Haaretz. "When I assumed my office, on 18 January, 2004," Eiland explained, "there was only an amorphous term 'disengagement' from a speech in Herzliya. I asked Sharon how much time I had to formulate a plan and he told me, four months. But very quickly it became clear to me that [PM Sharon's adviser] Dov Weissglas had already met with the Americans and committed us to a major unilateral step both in Gaza and the West Bank. "Immediately after, Sharon committed himself to the evacuation of 18 settlements in the Gaza Strip in an interview to [Haaretz's] Yoel Marcus, and at that point the game was up. The planning process I had began blew up." The Haaretz editors were sure they had a big story. They printed it prominently at the very top of the front page. And while the radio broadcast media did give it some coverage during the morning drive time, by noon it was already safely ensconced in the nation's collective memory hole. The same thing happened two days later when, Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin told in a meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee about the massive increase in weapons smuggling that has taken in the wake of the Gaza retreat. According to Diskin, since the IDF left Gaza, in September 2005, there were 11 tons of TNT, three million bullets, 19,600 rifles, 1,600 pistols, 65 RPG launchers, 430 RPGs and some 10 shoulder rocket launchers smuggled into Gaza from Egypt -- more than the total of weapons smuggled in from 1967 until Israel abandoned control of the Egypt-Gaza border. Will this cause PM Olmert to hesitate for a millisecond and think before he continues to plunge forward with his retreat idea? Probably not. Diskin's remarks are also now just old news. For years Israel has suffered the consequences of a leadership with the catastrophic combination of hubris and shallowness. Their lack of depth handicaps their own policy making while their hubris prevents them from seriously entertaining the possibility that they are wrong. Is there a chance of this changing? Hard to know. But with the costs of their cavalier approach becoming ever more apparent there is the very real possibility that the terrible consequences of the Gaza retreat will ultimately save us from implementing an even more devastatingly dangerous retreat in the West Bank. Contact Lee Caplan at leescaplan@yahoo.com |
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HOW THE PA BLAMED ISRAEL FOR THE DEATHS ON THE BEACH
Posted by Hillel Fendel, June 12, 2006. |
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The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) released a report on Saturday full of inaccuracies about the incident -- and has not yet released a correction or apology. The organization, whose reports are widely relied upon by the United Nations and other organizations, announced the following: "PCHR's preliminary investigation indicates that the attack which killed seven members of the same family took place at approximately 16:40 on Friday, 9 June 2006. An Israeli naval boat stationed off the coast of Beit Lahya fired seven successive artillery shells at civilians on the beach in the Waha area, north of Beit Lahya. The shells landed on the beach, which had been crowded with civilian men, women and children at the time. Seven civilians from the same family (father, mother and five children) were killed. A sixth child from the same family escaped death but was seen on television crying hysterically beside her father's body. A further 32 civilians, including 13 children, were injured... Israeli television Channel 2 broadcast footage of the Israeli boat firing the shells at the beach, with one of the navy soldiers scanning the beach with binoculars; thus indicating that the crime had been perpetrated with a premeditated intent to kill." An indication of PCHR's bias is the fact that it consistently refers to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as the IOF -- the Israeli Occupation Forces. The organization gathered data that led to the issuing of an arrest warrant in Great Britain against Gen. (ret.) Doron Almog in 2005 for "war crimes." He was to be charged with overseeing the dropping of a one-ton bomb in Gaza that killed Hamas arch-murderer Salah Shehadeh and several children in July 2002. Despite the PCHR claim that the explosion occurred at 16:40, the IDF investigation showed that the explosion did not occur before 16:58. IDF Southern Command O.C. Gen. Yoav Galant said that the IDF artillery in the area stopped firing at 16:51, and that at 16:58, "the IDF's electronic surveillance did not show any unusual activity on the beach." Arab affairs expert Yonatan D. HaLevy writes, "The PCHR version has turned rumors into 'facts' which then become 'proof' for PCHR to determine that Israeli naval soldiers 'meant to kill' the family." Writing for the NFC Hebrew news site, HaLevy adds, "The IDF fires 155mm artillery shells towards open areas in order to thwart the Kassam launchers, and often warns the locals not to be there. In the present case, it is very doubtful as to whether the family was hit by a 155mm shell. I carefully reviewed the video clips disseminated by the PA television, and the documentation of [Channel Two], and I did not find the large hole that a 155mm shell [would have made]." HaLevy said that for their part, the Arabs of the PA "made sure to exhibit the bodies of the dead, but refrained from showing the crater and the shrapnel as proof of their claims." Gen. (ret.) Yom Tov Samiyeh said, "It is almost certain that the incident [in which seven members of one family on a Gaza beach were killed in an explosion] was an accident caused by the Palestinians, and that the Palestinians took advantage of the situation to besmirch Israel." "I can imagine," Samiyeh said, "that there was some sort of mine, or at worst, even a set-up that the Palestinians arranged." He added that during his years of army service as IDF Southern District Commander, he experienced a number of incidents in which the Arabs set up attacks on citizens. The IDF investigation has so far shown that Israeli Navy ships definitely did not fire towards the beach at that time, based on the type of wounds and other evidence. HaLevy notes that video clips of navy sailors firing and scanning the beach were photographed at an earlier hour. HonestReporting.com, in a detailed review of the topic, notes that "many in the international media [rushed] to conclusions in the immediate aftermath of the terrible incident. For example, despite suggestions that a single artillery shell was responsible, the Guardian claimed that "a barrage of Israeli artillery shells rained down on a busy Gaza beach...", while the Independent, without waiting for confirmation or otherwise, attributed the incident to "Israeli naval gunboats". In fact, while the most likely explanation is a single stray artillery shell, the possibility of a Qassam missile fired from Gaza itself has not yet been discounted and has been made more difficult to ascertain due to Palestinian refusals to cooperate with Israeli investigators." Hillel Fendel is Senior News Editor for Israel National News. This news item appeared today in Arutz-Sheva (www.IsraelNN.com). |
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NO RELIEF FOR SDEROT RESIDENTS, KASSAM BARRAGES CONTINUE
Posted by Hillel Fendel, June 12, 2006. |
Nati Engel, 60, the custodian of the Shaar HaNegev school who was wounded by one of yesterday's rockets, is still listed in serious but stable condition. He was operated on in Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon. Several others were treated for shock, and one man was lightly hurt by shrapnel that hit his face. "Imagine that New York would be attacked by rockets several times," Sderot Mayor Eli Moyal said this morning. "It's obvious that within minutes, the source of the fire would be eradicated. That is how any country with dignity reacts to such a threat on its citizens. Only here, it appears, are we more concerned with the rights of others, and are willing to tolerate 2-3 deaths of our own citizens, as long as we do not hurt the Arabs in Gaza..." IDF sources counting the rockets say that the 1,000th rocket to be fired at Israel over the past years landed yesterday. This number does not include the more than 5,000 rockets and shells that the now-defunct Gush Katif suffered during this period. Security sources say the supply of rockets in Gaza is far from deleted, and that more are constantly being manufactured. Joining the chorus of those demanding a strong military response was former IDF officer Amram Mitzna, a one-time Labor Party national prime ministerial candidate, and Labor MK Matan Vilnai, a former IDF Deputy Chief of Staff. Mitzna, who strongly supported Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, said, "Blast them, give it to them... We've left Gaza already, and the government of Israel does not have the right not to respond to the bombardment of Israeli communities in the State of Israel." Though an open-ended school strike was declared in Sderot yesterday, it appears that many schools are open today. Many children did not arrive, however, possibly because of previous announcements this morning saying that schools were closed. "I'm afraid of the Red Dawn, Mommy," a child could be heard saying in the background of a phone conversation as he was being put to sleep. Residents throughout the town say that this reflects the situation in their own homes as well. "We have no idea what the long-term results of these fears will be," one concerned mother told Army Radio yesterday. Dozens of residents protested last night outside the home of Defense Minister Amir Peretz, a well-liked Sderot resident, demanding a military solution to the problem. Several residents, including one man named Alon Davidi, have also begun a hunger strike there, demanding that the army respond with an all-out strike against the towns in Gaza from where the rockets are fired. "We had hoped that today would be different," Davidi said this morning, "but it has already begun the same way, with four rockets this morning." The Red Dawn warning system sounded as he was speaking, but the rocket landed without incident. In an open letter, the hunger strikers wrote, "We are not striking to receive money, but rather to protect our rights and for the sake of the sanctity of life. We call on everyone to join us. Today it is us, and we hope that tomorrow it won't be you." Education Minister Yuli Tamir toured Sderot schools this morning. "I can't stop the Kassam rockets," she said, "but I can promise that every student will receive the necessary help from the educational system." She also said that she opposes a sharp military response. "These escalations never lead to calm," she said. Similar claims have been countered in the past with the example of Operation Defensive Shield, a massive IDF military operation in the Shomron in 2002 that led to a steady drop in terrorist attacks and deaths. Another protest this morning was held, for the first time, at the
nearby Kibbutz Shaar HaNegev junction. Their beef is the same as that
of those who live in Sderot. They demand security, saying they have no
place to run when the Red Dawn warning sounds, as their houses are
"made of cardboard."
Hillel Fendel is Senior News Editor for Israel National News.
This news item appeared today in Arutz-Sheva (www.IsraelNN.com).
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JONATHAN POLLARD'S LETTER TO THE PEOPLE OF SDEROT
Posted by Justice For Jonathan Pollard, June 12, 2006. |
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To the Dear People of Sderot, HaShalom v'habracha! Although it is no simple matter for me in my current circumstances, I feel compelled to get a message of encouragement and support out to you. Five years ago, I concluded a letter to former Prime Minster Ariel Sharon with the following statement: "Recent events in Israel demonstrate that you have an uncanny ability to tolerate the agony of our people at this excruciating time in our history. Be aware that this ability to block out their cries and ignore their suffering is no more than an extension of your ability to tolerate the agony of one Israeli agent. After all, 5 million is just 5 million multiplied by one." In truth, when I wrote these words I would never have imagined how absolutely accurate they would be today. At that time, absolutely noone ever imagined, even in their worst nightmares, that the situation of Am Yisrael would degenerate to the extent that it has. Please know, Dear People of Sderot, that in your determination to put an end to the abandonment of your city to terror, you are fighting not only for the people of Sderot, but also for the State and for the Nation at large. A government which allows your lives to bejeopardized daily by on-going missile attacks is a government which is capable of abandoning every single citizen without exception. If at one time there were those who believed that the victims of government abandonment were limited to certain select individuals or groups that could be ignored, such as: the MIAs, Mudhat Yosef, the SLA army, the collaborators, or old folks and sick people, today it is clear that the policy of government abandonment puts every Israeli citizen at risk! We must restore the ideal of "Arevut Hadadit" (mutualresponsibility) to our national consciousness! All for one and one forall! I wish I could be with you in person at this time to demonstrate with you in Sderot. Since I am prevented from doing so, Iam sending my dear wife, Esther, to you to bring you this letter and this message. I call upon all The People of Israel: Stand up for your brothers, the People of Sderot! If not for their sake, then for your own! In much the same way that no one could imagine just a few short years ago that cities in Israel would be blowing up and the world would not come to a stand-still over it, today no one can imagine just how bad things may get if we do not wake up, and do what needs to be done now. I pray for your success and for a speedy recovery for those who have been injured. I urge you not to despair, for ultimately justice and truth must prevail! with love of Israel, Jonathan Pollard
Contact the Justice For Jonathan Pollard at Justice4JP@aol.com |
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OLMERT'S GOVERNMENT IS THE MOST ANTI-JEWISH SINCE HEROD'S
Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, June 11, 2006. |
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The present Israeli government under Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is following the same road as King Herod did around the year One. Herod, as you may recall, was the advance representatives of the Romans. Herod was an enemy of the Jewish people so much so that, before he died, he left orders that he was to be buried in secret and at a location that could not be easily found. He even employed guards to be stationed at this secret burial site so the people who hated him so much would not invade his tombs and scatter his bones in the desert. He was virulently hated and for all the right reasons. Now we see a small-minded man who wants to be a King like Herod or something like him. As a shifty and clever lawyer he has ideas of how to carry out plans to subvert the Jews who are in the Land that G-d promised them, that they settled and made bloom. Sometimes behind him, sometimes in front of him we see the Jew haters of the State Department and the Europeans who aided the Nazis to round up their Jews and send to the death camps. They are still always there to subvert the Jewish State. So, what else is going on in this plan of subversion so proudly led by PM Olmert and his Kadimites? One small but important indicator is that Olmert has ordered that Jew Stickers be affixed to cars on those who reside in Judea and Samaria. We all the remember the decades when the Jew-haters in Europe and in Muslim countries insisted that Jews wear special colors on their clothing to insure that they would be well recognized. Adolph Hitler used the Mogen David (the Jewish Star) in yellow to be sewn onto the clothes of Jews. Now Olmert uses the more modern materials of pressure sensitive bumper stickers, defining their cars as belonging to Jews. This will, of course, also mark the car and its occupants as Jews of Judea and Samaria (the "west bank") as a well-marked target for snipers. The stickers will also assist Israel's corrupt Leftist Generals who can issue orders to attack and confiscate Jewish cars and Jews who drive in them. Another indicator of Olmert's Kadimite policies is their refusal to complete a stretch of road making it easier for East Gush Etzion settlers to reach Jerusalem. A new road was started but blocked to Jewish traffic by an anti-Semitic "Jewish" Government. Older Americans may well remember early bigotry where signs were put up saying: "Jews, Irish and Dogs Not Welcome". Perhaps Olmert will soon put up such signs: "Jews who live in the Territories are Not Welcome" -- "Jews Not Respected" -- "Jews Raus (Out)". Some will remember the finest days of Israel when the Arabs blockaded Jerusalem, killing everyone in relief columns attempting to reach the beleaguered city. Imaginative and patriotic Jews had built a road up the hills, out of sight of the Arabs. Hollywood memorialized Col. Mickey Marcus who brain stormed this gargantuan feat. That was when Israel had just been born as a Jewish State and the people began to stream in from the English concentration camps in Cyprus and survivors from the death camps of Europe. That was when there was a proud army with no equipment or training but whose Generals and Government believed in the Jewish nation. Israel survived the onslaught of 6 Arab Muslim armies, well-equipped by the British and other anti-Jewish/anti-Israel countries because they believed in the justice of their G-d, their country and themselves having a country of their own to live in and grow according the G-d Laws given to the Jews. Even refugees out of the camps came to build that back supply road with picks and shovels. These were proud Jews. They survived their losses of whole families -- despite some few who were also like Olmert and Sharon who adopted the interests of foreign nations who demanded that Arab interests came first. Perhaps it is time for the patriotic Jews of Judea and Samaria to march to that unfinished road with picks and shovels to finish what an anti-Jewish government refuses to do and to tear down those signs demanding that this road be used only by Arab Muslims. What happened to the once courageous Israeli Israelis? How did the Army become a lapdog for a defeatist Leftist Government, more concerned for Muslim Arabs than for Jews. We always knew that many of the Europeans were Jew-haters, dedicated to killing off as many of us as they could. We also knew that lurking in the bowels of the State Department were the same Jew haters who refused to rescue Jews from Hitler's Final Solution of Death to the Jews. They also fought against establishing the Jewish State of refuge from the haters. They are still on the trail like a pack of wolves chasing their prey. But, our greatest enemies have always come from within. The Olso Accords did not come from Jewish heroes but from those Jews who were already defeated in heart and soul. The Gush Katif/Gaza and North Samarian gerush (forced emigration) did NOT come from patriots but from Jews who long ago became un-Jews and enemies of the State. They did not see themselves as Chamberlains, Quislings, or traitors. They claimed they were "saving the democratic Jewish State" by retreating and abandoning our G-d given Land to the Muslim Arabs who pledged our total destruction and taught their children to hate and kill us. The Ghosts of Herod, Josephus and other Jewish traitors are hovering over Israel, goading her into betrayal. The betrayers on the inside are counting on a gutless government and all the Leftists they have placed in the IDF's Officers' Corps, the Police, the Supreme Court and now the Kadimites. All the losers, all the defeatists and all the betrayers of the dream of a Jewish State are gathering inside Israel. Let the Jews of Judea and Samaria come and finish the Road to Har Homah and then drive the Government of new Herods into the desert. They are not worth the lives of all who have fallen for the nation and those who will yet fall unnecessarily because of the corrupt Kadimites and there equally corrupt Prime Minister. The "Road" is merely a small indicator of Olmert's team of planners' thoughts in subverting Judea and Samaria. Every angle, every trick is being organized and advanced: raids on outposts; PA Referendums -- also well known to the State Department (watch this one); push to evacuate YESHA; abandoning oil and gas deposits off the Gaza Coast to oil consortiums; buying Saudi approval which is rapidly becoming irrelevant. The parts maybe intended to look separate but, it is one intricate matrix, woven together to eliminate the Jewish State. There is much more but, look at it as one package. Olmert is a small player except for the value of his weakness and thus the ability to manipulate because of his position in the office of Prime Minister with all its various aids. The Jews of Israel and the world are faced with formidable adversaries. IF the Jews believe what they are seeing is what they are supposed to see, then we are lost. IF, however, we back off and take a long view from the mountain top and realize that we are being taken, we might -- just might -- survive. Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel and Gamla. He is a member of the Board of Directors and a research associate of the Freeman Center For Strategic Studies (http://www.freeman.org/online.htm). Contact him at gwinston@interaccess.com |
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ROOTS OF TERRORISM: HINDUS SUFFERED MAXIMUM BRUNT
Posted by Jeffrey Epstein, June 11, 2006. |
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This article on last month's Symposium on Terrorism was written
by Narain Kataria.
He is President, Indian American Intellectuals Forum, New York. The
Report appeared today on the Organiser
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A Symposium on "Roots of terrorism" was organised by America's Truth Forum in Washington, D.C. last month. It was attended by prominent and highly-placed scholars and experts on Islamic Studies. Most of them were celebrities and frequent guests on national TV and Radio Stations. Dr. Babu Suseelan, a Psychologist and Director of Addiction Research Institute, PA and Board Member of Indian American Intellectuals Forum (IAIF) presented his viewpoint in a forceful manner. The symposium was well attended by about 400 intellectuals and US opinion makers; majority of whom were Jewish and Christian Americans. IAIF members too were present in a sizable number. This was a rare occasion for IAIF members to interact with American mainstream personalities and exchange the Indian viewpoint openly on the menace of terrorism. It was, probably, for the first time that the presence and scholarship of Hindu Americans was recognised and appreciated by renowned global experts on counter-terrorism. Surprisingly, many of these well recognised experts on counter-terrorism did not know enough about the terrible atrocities perpetrated on peaceful Hindus by the Islamic invaders and rulers. Dr. Babu Suseelan explained that it was absolutely essential for the world to understand the deadly ideology that successfully transforms the simple human beings into deadly suicide bombers and terrorists. He said that we cannot deal with the problem of terrorism until and unless we completely comprehend the ideology which extols the virtues of killing and preaches hate, incites violence and enjoins on its followers to instill terror in the hearts of those who do not believe. Many of the Islamic injunctions make the co-existence of Muslims with any other people almost impossible. That is the reason why Muslims have been in a state of perpetual war wherever they live, be it Afghanistan or Iraq, Chechnya or Sudan, Kashmir or Thailand, Indonesia or Bangladesh, Philippine or Spain, USA, UK, or India. It is vital to understand that Islamic menace exists because of liberal's habitual tolerance of intolerance. Their tolerance of intolerance is not tolerance. This type of pathological tolerance, sobering sympathy for Jihadists and stony indifference to victims is immoral and barbaric. Tracing the history of India, Dr. Suseelan pointed out that the Afghanistan was once Hindu and a part of the original India of that time. In 1947, Pakistan too was forcibly carved out of the Indian Territory by Islamists. Now, feverish efforts are on by all Islamic nations to wrest the Indian Kashmir from the Hindu India. Threats of violence, loot, murder and rape of Hindus -- all familiar tools of terrorism -- have become a routine thing in Kashmir today. Some of us mistakenly believe that terrorism in the world began from 9/11/2001. This assumption is based on ignorance, lack of historical background and devoid of factual data. For example, India has been experiencing terrorism for hundreds of years. Even the so-called Moghul King 'Akbar-the-Great' had killed 30,000 to 40,000 innocent Hindus in one day. It is common knowledge in India that 14,000 young Hindu girls had to burn themselves in fire in a city named Chittor in a western sate of Rajasthan in India when Hindu soldiers were not able to defend the honor of their womenfolk against the barbarian Islamic forces. Timur-the-Terrible ordered his soldiers to kill 100,000 Hindu prisoners in one day. Tuzk-i-Timuri, the book written by his historian records "In a short span of time all the people in the fort were put to sword, and in the course of one hour the heads of 10,000 infidels were cut off. The sword of Islam was washed in the blood of the infidels." Almost entire world knows that six million Jewish people were murdered by Nazis. It is also known that 1.2 million Armenians were butchered by Turkish Muslims. Will Durant, the celebrated author of The Story of Civilization has said that "The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history." Anwar Shaikh, a Pakistani Muslim scholar of repute settled in UK, in his book This is Jihad says that "The Muslims must fight non-Muslims." Mr. Koenraad Elst, the Belgian scholar and Indologist says that there is a place in Afghanistan called The Hindu Kush, which means the slaughter of Hindu. At present, Hindus are under siege in India. Muslim population there is rising with leaps and bounds. There are 162 million Muslims living in Pakistan. There are approximately 150 to 160 million Muslims in India; Bangladesh has another 147 million Muslims. Roughly one-third of the world's Muslim population lives in the Indian sub-continent. This is a very frightening scenario for India. Enlightened audience in the high-profile Symposium was horrified and shocked at the information provided and profusely applauded Dr. Suseelan time and again. Later, many groups invited him to speak on television, radio, and in their meetings. These were some of the luminaries who participated in the Symposium: R. James Woolsey, former Director of CIA, Dr. Paul Williams, former Consultant to FBI, Dr. Bruce Tefft, a founding member of the CIA's Counter Terrorism Center, Dr. Andrew Bostom, Editor of The Legacy of Jihad, Joe Kaufman, Investigative Journalist for Frontpage Magazine, Robert Spencer, Director of Jihad Watch, David Horowitz, President of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, Walid Shobat, a former PLO functionary, Brigitte Gabriel, a former anchor for world news in the Middle East and a prominent Arab-American journalist, Dr. Harvey Kushner, a noted author, lecturer, professor and internationally recognized authority on terrorism, Kenneth Timmerman, a nominee for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. Jeffrey Epstein of the People's Truth Forum can be contacted at JEpstein@lauramansfield.com |
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PALLYWOOD RETURNS: IDF FORCED NOT TO PROTECT ISRAELIS
Posted by Moshe Burt, June 11, 2006. |
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An excerpt: A terrible tragedy happened on the Gaza beach. A shell exploded and killed 7 men, women and children and injured others. Israel is investigating. But Mark Regev, the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman who said that Israel believes such shelling of civilians to be unacceptable also told the BBC that naval or air shelling have been ruled out. Other possibities are explored. In the meantime Hamas vows to end the unilateral cease-fire with Israel. But, please, watch the BBC report and tell me what were the cameramen doing on the beach at the moment the shell hit? CNN has the exact same footage. Are we once again dealing with a Jenin/al Dura style staged recreation? Israel stopped firing 15 minutes before the explosion. Hamas rushed to clear the site of the blast, and removed all remnants of the explosives. They didn't invite the press to see the remnants. Hmn. Do you get the feeling that this is a return to "pallywood?" That the "deaths" of these "civilians" was staged? Watch the CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera films and notice that one of the "dead" got up. Check it out: Hooray for Pallywood This piece is called, "Open Season on Ashkelon as Amir, the Gullible, Halts Artillery Response to Kassams." It was written by Harvey Tannenbaum (protexia@netvision.net.il). |
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THE IDF ON STRIKE! Defenseless Minister Amir Perutz ordered the IDF to standdown for 48hours and not to return artillery fire on kassams coming into Israel. He wants to investigate why 7 PLO 'innocent'(sic)people were killed by possibly-PLO fired guns (the press already blames the IDF anyway) & so for 48 hours, the kassams and rockets may be allowed to hit anywhere in the Jewish neighborhoods...IDF is tied up ... no response allowed. Sounds like it's Amir's first return to the 'strike of employees' method of his old union days when he would shut down the civilian aspects of our country...now he is shutting down the IDF. In addition, Olmert's daughter was one of the 200 picketing persons on Shabbat in front of IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz' house against him as a 'murderer' of innocent terrorists... Such nachas for Ehud (that's in addition to his 2 sons who evaded the IDF at age 18 and went to Europe and USA!) PS. While the IDF brass try to confirm that the 7 arabs killed on Gaza beach by their own Kassam firing brothers, Olmert is apologizing, crying, and appeasing, while 'investigating' the IDF! Meantime, Sderot has received 23 kassams in 12hours and the IDF is not allowed to return fire of its artillery even on empty buildings or empty land for 48 hours until the Histadrut Defenseless Minister Pereutz checks out his artillery gunners. A school was hit, a man is in surgery, children are out in the streets of Sderot as schools are being hit and now closed down... And Ehud Olmert is still planning to go to Paris and London for some cigars and meetings? PPS. IDF -- The Most Moral Army in the World -- Led by some of the
most immoral leaders in the world.
Regards,
Contact Moshe Burt at moshebur@actcom.co.il |
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PARLAY THE DEMISE OF ZARQAWI
Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, June 11, 2006. |
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This world of civilized nations must not allow the auspicious killing of mutant Islamic terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to be in vain. Accurate intelligence secured from cooperative Iraqis is responsible for the downfall of the sadistic madman. However, such a triumph must be parlayed into similar events against other brutal jihad junkies that threaten planetary security. If moderate Muslims worldwide comprehend the need to rescue their culture from hijacking radicals, such warmongers will find few sanctuaries to craft their pernicious plans. If this is to be accomplished, Iraq must be stabilized, becoming a paradigm for the necessary modernization of Islam. For that to occur, a loose confederation of three regions; primarily populated from north to south by Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites; must be established under the umbrella of Constitutional guarantees for human rights. Furthermore, oil revenues must be divided appropriately on a per capita basis throughout the fledgling confederation. If such an outcome is realized, the entire Muslim Middle East could be propitiously influenced, thus begin to morph into an adaptable region ever worthy to confront the challenges of an emerging technologically progressive century twenty-one. Alas, if such an outcome is not realized, the Middle East could further devolve into an even more perilous enclave, further threatening the civil existence of modern nations. If indeed Iraq becomes a stable country, enacting policies supporting justice and freedom for all of its citizens, we will likely witness over time a favorable metamorphosis of fundamentalist as well as secular Islamic autocracies. Surely, the beleaguered State of Israel will profit from such a renaissance. Removing any rose-colored spectacles, today's fact on the ground, however, are counter indicative of that manifestation. A surging post-Zarqawi insurgency looms and must be thwarted aggressively. This cannot be done unless movers and shaker nations of the civilized secular world unite in a determined effort not to appease autocratic suppressive Islamic regimes for the sake of oil contracts or military alliances of convenience. Such regimes exploit and abuse populations that are consequentially seduced by manipulative fundamentalist terrorists tending to their needs and promising them better lives. In effect, non-Muslim first world oil-dependent powerful nations of the West and East cannot be perceived as having forked-tongues when talking the justice and freedom talk, while walking the Islamic dictator walk. Many first world nations alas remain today black gold substance abusers, in bed with their favorite ruthless ruling fossil fuel pusher(s), and must change their ways. There is no better way for civil nations to aid in vanquishing post-Zarqawi and din-Laden insurgencies in Iraq and elsewhere than by being perceived as appropriate role models, doing the right things in the eyes of Muslim grass-root potential revolutionaries intent on truly securing human rights thus dignity for the masses they represent. The aforementioned plan of creating three separate loosely connected regions, each having sufficient resources to prosper, each respecting the rights of all citizens under its aegis by Constitutional mandate, can be proposed by a coalition of nations perceived by ordinary Iraqi citizens to be sincere in their efforts, but must be mostly crafted and completely implemented by a representative cadre of democratically elected Iraqi officials. Negative images of foreign interlopers will be difficult to overcome, nevertheless, winning the trust of ordinary Iraqis, and in the process ordinary Muslim citizens throughout the Middle East, is ever critical if radical Islamic insurgents are to be defeated in the long run. Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at luniglicht@snip.net |
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30 ROCKETS IN 24 HRS INTO ISRAEL
Posted by Stan Bowman, Jr., June 11, 2006. |
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I wish I could understand why the WORLD condems ISRAEL for everything, yet the Arabs have blown up thousands upon thousands of ISRAELI Children, Women and Men. Why the USA and western countries stick up for the Arabs and not Israel is beyond me. When the Bible clearly says its Israels land given to them by GOD, and who ever blesses ISRAEL will be blessed, whoever curses ISRAEL will be cursed and destroyed. This just tells me theres not a whole lot of Christian people in the West. We claim to be Christian Nations in the West, but we sure don't go by what GOD says or everyone who calls themselves Christians would be sticking up for ISRAEL and not the Arabs on the Mideast Land Issue. Now we know why the Bible says if you do my saying not just talk my sayings you are of GOD. Christians we better start believing the Bible and stick up for ISRAEL and help them with this Arab situation. We must demand its ISRAELS land givin them by the creator of everything thats been created GOD, not Politicians, not the European Union, not the United Nations. We must stick up for Israel and help them get the Arabs off their GOD givin land. The Bible clearly says the ISRAELIS and ARABS will live side by side in the future but ISRAEL will control the MIDEAST and JERUSALEM will be the WORLD CAPITAL. The bounderies of the state of Israel are recorded in scripture. (see Numbers 34:2-15; Joshua 11:16-23; 13:11-22.) The bounderies are futhur described in Ezekiel 47:13-28 and all of chapter 48. Here is the Land Abraham, Isaac and Jacobs (Israels) decendants inherit forever. Egypt east of the Nile River, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, The southern part of Turkey and the Western Half of Iraq west of the Euphrates. Gen 13:14-15, Psm 105:9,11, Gen 15:18, Exe 23:31, Num 34:1-12, Josh 1:4. Unfortunately the Bible does say it will be through GOD and WAR not peace that ISRAEL gets their land. So the Bible will all come to pass (since GOD can not lie), everything the Bible says is and will come to pass literally just like JESUS' BIRTH, DEATH and RESURRECTION was literal, the Prophecies from the ISRAELI Prophets will come to pass literally not Spiritually like some Churches teach (FALSE TEACHING). Of course is you believe this false teaching that ISRAEL is the Church and JERUSALEM is heaven you can eliminate ISRAEL and JERUSALEM from the Prophecies and believe anything in your Imagination. SMARTIN UP WORLD, THE WORLD WILL BE TEMPORARILY DESTROYED TO GIVE PEOPLE HINTS THAT THE GOD OF ISRAEL IS IN CONTROL OF EVERYTHING, NO MAN. GENESIS 12:3
JOEL 3:2
This news item is called "Kassam rain falls on Negev towns: More
than 30 fired in 24 hours by terrorists of Hamas-led PA" and was
written by Stan Goodenough. It appeared today on the Jerusalem
Newswire |
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"Palestinians" taking full advantage of an explosion that killed seven Arabs on Friday -- and an incident that led Israel to suspend retaliatory shelling -- unleashed a barrage of Kassam rockets at Israeli towns in the Negev over the weekend.Terrorist members of Hamas, the organization controlling the Palestinian Authority, have been behind the attacks, which have seen at least 32 rockets fired in a 36 hour period.Hamas, which has purportedly been observing a "ceasefire" against Israel, announced its intention to "resume" attacks after the incident on Friday. Its intention, said an official, is to render the population center of S'derot into a ghost town. At least one person was critically wounded, and a number lightly injured, when four out of 13 rockets fired Sunday morning hit the S'derot area. One landed near a first grade classroom.The town ordered all schools closed and instructed parents to keep their children off the street to protect them from attacks.As the rockets were falling, S'derot mayor Eli Moyal was meeting with officials in the Prime Minister's Office, where he complained at the lack of adequate security precautions being taken on behalf of his townspeople. Moyal was told to convey to his citizens that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert supported them in their situation.Because of the ban on artillery retaliation, it took most of Sunday morning before Israeli Air Force planes began targeting Kassam cells with rocket fire. At least one two-man Kassam firing cell was blown apart in an IAF missile strike. Contact Stan Bowman Jr. at
stan120032000@yahoo.ca or go to his websites: |
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LEHI MEMBERS REFUTE COMPARISON TO HAMAS
Posted by Bryna Berch, June 11, 2006. |
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LEHI is the Hebrew acronym for "Fighters for the Freedom of Israel" -- Lohame Herut Yisra'el. They were also known as the Stern Gang, after the name of their leader, Abraham Stern, who founded the organization in 1940. It was a clandestine Jewish group that terrorized the British in Palestine, who were not fulfilling their clear duty under international law actively to help establish the Jewish state. Instead, while Jews were being slaughtered in Europe, they restricted Jewish immigration and armed the Arabs. LEHI believed in fighting the British not helping them, yet some of them were among the 25,000 Jews who served in the British Armed Forces in World War II. This was written by Daled Amos and it appeared on his website: (http://daledamos.blogspot.com/2006/06/ lehi-members-refute-comparison-to.html) |
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Back in February, Murray Richtel -- a dual citizen of both the US and Israel, and a district court judge in Boulder, Colorado from 1977 to 1996 -- decided to resolve the comparison some made between the terrorist group Hamas and LEHI, which terrorized the British in Palestine prior to the establishment of Israel. He looked up some of the surviving members, interviewed them, and wrote an article about them -- using ficticious names. All of them denied a comparison with Hamas -- and explained why. One of the main points they consistently made is that unlike Hamas -- whose arbitrary targets are innocent civilians, including women and children -- we didn't want innocents to die. We never willingly killed the innocent When asked about the notion that "one man's freedom fighter is another's terrorist," one former member, 'Amos' notes "I agree there is a subjective element in the way you look at these things." But he added with emphasis, "killing men and women drinking coffee, it is not possible to compare." 'Yasmine' notes the opportunities, and reasons, that LEHI had for killing innocents -- but didn't. "We didn't kill even one child," she told me. She opined that LEHI could have saved its members sent to the British gallows for carrying illegal weapons by kidnapping British women and children to use as hostages for prisoner exchanges. But harming children, "never, never, never-it is so brutal." Another member, 'Irit' comments about the comparison: "All along they compared us to suicide bombers. The most important thing to remember is that we never hit innocent people. We never touched the families of high officers and we knew exactly where they were. It simply never entered our minds. It was important to hit only those who continued British policies, stopping us from establishing our nation. We were acting against a foreign occupier." [emphasis added] That last comment is similar to the claim made by the Palestinian terrorists in general and Hamas in particular. But 'Shoshi' responds that there is a difference: "Our longing was to build a Jewish state. We were fighting for land described in the Bible as being for the children of Israel. It was never any kind of independent country for the Palestinians. They never seriously claimed that before we got here. When we came here the Arabs didn't call themselves Palestinians." I [Richtel] responded that It still seemed like a claim to land being made by the occupied to the occupier. Her retort: "Even our enemies knew it was ours. I remember in Germany in 1933 the cries -- 'Jews to Palestine' -- all the Christian World knew it was our state. I heard it in Belgium too. The whole world said go to your own country." Another member, 'Yasmine,' was assigned to assassinate General Barker, the British Commanding General in Palestine. Suicide bombing was not an option: And so Yasmine staked out Barker. On a daily basis, she walked back and forth in front of his residence dressed as a nurse pushing a baby carriage containing a blanket covered doll. The plan was to work out the timing so that Yasmine could escape after detonating a bomb, substituted for the doll, that would kill Barker. To Yasmine's disappointment, the plan was abandoned when she could not satisfy her handlers that she could carry out the operation without herself being killed. LEHI, she asserted, would never have engaged in an operation that put their fighters or civilians at risk, and the idea of a suicide mission was beyond their comprehension. There is still alot of disagreement about LEHI. Innocents were killed by LEHI and another group at Deir Yassin in 1948 -- though many agree that it was a military operation that got out of control. [Editor's note: Arabs who lived in Deir Yassan have since admitted they exaggerated and lied and didn't mention that the Jews gave the women and children every opportunity to leave. But the Arabs leaders believed that the propaganda value of dead civilians was more important than keeping these civilians alive.] Of course, none of this will dissuade those intent to make comparisons between LEHI and Hamas -- and Media Backspin notes that when it comes to Jews, The Independent drops the euphemisms and uses the T-word. |
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MORALITY? PRAGMATISM? DEMOCRACY?
Posted by Batya Medad, June 11, 2006. |
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We'll begin with a series of quotations, verbal images to think about.
These are all connected. Olmert's daughter is a leader of Machsom Watch. Olmert's concern as a "moral leader" is with the good health and safety of the enemy. Yes, the same enemy that wants to wipe us off the map. I don't see the same moral outrage from him when Jews are murdered. Just like the incident a few years ago when an Arab boy -- Mohammed al Dura -- was killed in "cross-fire" between Israel and the terrorists. Israel kept apologizing, then it was proven that the kid was killed by the Arabs, and his father had known it all along. [Editor's note: There's evidence it was all faked, even his "eye-witnessed" death.] Even though Olmert is pledging to investigate the tragedy thoroughly, facts are already emerging that the family was killed by their fellow Arabs. But that won't stop "moral" Israel from compensating the survivors and apologizing for existing. If someone was to re-write a modern version of The Mouse that Roared, they'll substitute Israel for the United States. It's the story of a very poor country that declared war on the U.S. in order to lose it, so they would get generous compensation and development funding. It's written as a political satire, and the movie stars Peter Sellers, which should give you an idea of its absurdity. And if you didn't guess, the U.S. surrendered, certain that the unknown country had a dangerous secret weapon. That connects us to China's Mao Ze Dong calling the United States a "paper tiger." Yes, Israel is some sort of sick joke. What's the cure? It's certainly not the perverse "morality" so popular among our "elite." I've noticed a new and disturbing phenomena in the media. The cities and villages which are being bombed--think of the London Blitz during WWII--are being referred to as: "near-Gaza communities." Just like Disengagement was marketed as "withdrawalwl from Gaza," which it wasn't, now that leper-label is being applied to cities like Ashkelon and Sderot and even left-wing kibbutzim. At what time will our People wake up? That's the question, and it's an old one. This coming Shabbat, here in Israel (abroad a week later) we read Parshat Shlach Lecha, about the sin of the spies. One of the main and most important lessons from this portion of the week is that Democracy isn't reliable. Or should I be blunter and tell the truth, that Democracy isn't Jewish; it's a sin. Well, think about it. Moshe sent a representative, the top guy from each tribe on a special "pilot tour" of the Promised Land. It was sponsored by "the boss" and the deal was that they were supposed to return all hyped up: "Yaala! Let's go!" " It's gorgeous, fertile and rich! You can make a meal on that grape, try it." "The locals will disappear in the sand, like the Egyptians did in the sea!" They weren't sent for a "pragmatic analysis" of the relative defensive and military strength, and demographic predictions according to the Egyptian supreme court... Unfortunately the report by the ten out of twelve (majority) reminds me of the New Religious-Zionist Pamphlet: "Our Way at This Time" by "leading religious-Zionist leaders such as Rabbis Chaim Druckman, Yaakov Ariel, Shlomo Aviner, Tzfaniah Drori, Moti Elon, Eli Sadan, Aryeh Stern, Chananel Etrog, Yigal Kaminetzky, David Stav, Avi Gisser, and more." It's a carefully worded document which tries to marry Jewish Law with pragmatism. Why "pragmatism?" It's like a "shotgun wedding" to a rapist. No true leader is a pragmatist. The conservative accountant won't make a fortune; he'll make a steady safe income. "Pragmatism," during our interview with Daniella Weiss of Kedumim, Sharon Katz and I heard her talk about the dangers of pragmatism, and I agree with her. The people who believe in pragmatism would have had voted with the ten spies who sinned against G-d and our Land. They were pragmatic! Calev and Yehoshua were not, and they were the ones who were right, but in the end the entire People had to suffer because of the majority. There are three things that endanger us: Think about it. OK, you may have to get "out of the box" to do so, but do you really want to live behind barbed wire in a ghetto? Batya Batya Medad lives in Shiloh. She can be reached by email at Shilohmuse@yahoo.com or visit her website http://shilohmusings.blogspot.com/ or go to http://www.shilo.org.il |
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GAZA BEACH "ATTACK"
Posted by David Frankfurter, June 11, 2006. |
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Dear Friends, The IDF has been very carefully checking itself over the last days. A senior officer just appeared on Israeli television explaning that all IDF shelling in the Gaza area where the Palestinian family was tragically killed stopped well before the tragic explosion occured. He also explained that the Palestinians were known to have explosives in the area, that the Palestinians refused to co-operate in any way with the Israeli investigations, and that all injured were taken to a Palestinian hospital to remove all traces of metal fragments from their bodies before being transferred to Israeli hospitals for proper care. All signs were that the explosions were Palestinian in origin and that a massive blood libel and cover-up was implemented. Hamas "response" is underway. Serious injuries in a rocket attack in the south. One killed in a drive-by shooting on a road we regularly travel when visiting Jerusalem. Calls for Jewish blood across the Arab world. Palestinians kill each other and murder Jews in "revenge". But let me ask the obvious. What sort of a society stores explosives and launches rockets from a family beach? What sort of society has families picnic on a beach which is known to suffer a barrage of enemy tank fire against those same rocket launching positions? But don't think that it is all "them". Where are your solidarity campaigns, symbolic boycotts, divestment movements, protests and demonstrations against Palestinian barbarism? David David Frankfurter is a business consultant, corporate executive
and writer who frequently comments on the Middle East.
To subscribe to his 'Letter from Israel', email him at
david.frankfurter@iname.com. Or go to
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BE A PART OF THE "SUMMER OF OPPORTUNITIES"
Posted by Aaron Tirschwell, June 11, 2006. |
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The children of the evacuated communities of Gush Katif and the Northern Shomron suffer from a full range of traumatic and post traumatic stress symptoms including anxiety, depression, regressive behaviors, separation problems, sleep difficulties, behavioral problems, a lack of concentration, lack of motivation, and difficulties coping with new or challenging situations. Many of them are separated from childhood friends whom they miss terribly. In an unprecedented strategic partnership between One Israel Fund, The Gush Katif Committee, and The Koby Mandell Foundation, a post trauma camping experience for children who were evacuated from Gush Katif has been developed. Based on the framework for traumatic bereavement therapy developed at Camp Koby in their work with terror victims, the camp, entitled the Summer of Opportunities program, will offer a 10 day overnight camp experience for children ages 10 to 15, comprising of 650 children in that age group. The Summer of Opportunities program is about creating a fun and exciting place that will offer children a respite from the pressures of family, school and society. Secondly, it will create a supportive environment where children and adolescents will be with others who share their experiences. Thirdly, the Summer of Opportunities program will reunite children with their friends from their home communities, strengthening their connections and offering a respite form the sense of loneliness and sadness that is natural when coping with loss. For $750 you can sponsor a camper's 10 day experience of a lifetime that will help build relationships, develop coping mechanisms to deal with the one year anniversary of the disengagement, and instill feelings of belonging and worthiness. The Summer of Opportunities program is estimated to cost in excess of $500,000. Contact Aaron Tirschwell by email at aaron@oneisraelfund.org |
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PLEA FROM A JEWISH ACTIVIST
Posted by Lee Caplan, June 10, 2006. |
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This was written byYekutiel Guzofsky. I personally know Yekutiel Guzofsky, as well as Binyamin Lemkin who sent me this email who is a friend of mine from Ramat Beit Shemesh. [Editor's note: This is a historic document. Fern Sidman adds: It is now clear what the motivation behind the impending arrest of Mr. Guzofsky is. It is clearly a government plot to destroy the last vestiges of Jewish resistance to further expulsion of Jews in Judea and Samaria. How easy it would be to arrest a "Kahanist" and call him a "terrorist". How simple it would be to gain public support for such an arrest. After all, the fascist media in Israel, with the help of the government of Israel, has successfully indoctrinated the Israeli public to believe that anyone associated with the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, HY'D, ZTK'L is a potential terrorist. After all, who would go to bat and speak out on behalf of Mr. Guzofsky and others in the Kahane movement? Surely, it wouldn't be the Israeli Association for Civil Rights or any other public advocacy group. They are clearly associated with defending the rights of Arabs and Jewish leftists who are arrested in Israel. Tragically, we cannot depend on the support of the organized, mainstream Yesha community, who are dependent on the IDF for protection and have defended their actions when it came to forcibly evicting Jewish settlers from their homes. The Torah enjoins us to preserve and defend justice and righteousness. Tzedek, tzedek tirdof -- Justice, justice shalt thou pursue. May the Almighty G-d of Israel give us the strength and courage to speak out and defend justice and may He protect those who are falsely charged and imprisoned.] |
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I write this letter to you not knowing if I will have another opportunity any time soon to send you updates of our unique perspective on Israeli news. While I am not on the run, and I have no reason to go underground, rumor has it that the Israeli authorities are planning to arrest me and several others next week. I have done nothing wrong. I have violated no law of the land. This would not be the first time that I would be arrested by the shin bet or Israeli police without due cause. This would not be the first time I am persecuted for my Torah views and my love of Israel. This would mark my 41st arrest since I made aliyah to Israel in 1982, at the age of 18. Out of my 41 arrests, I was convicted only 6 times, between the years of 1982-1986 and all were for minor protest offences. The facts speak for themselves. the Israeli authorities continue to persecute those of us who effectively articulate opposition to their suicidal plans to surrender more Jewish land as they continue to crush and destroy the last remnance of Jewish identity and Judaism. The Olmart government has not only set out to crush any opposition to his convergence-expulsion plan, they also seek to destroy any organizations that offer security and defense for vulnerable towns in Yesha. It will be much easier to remove the residents, if they are completely dependent on the IDF for their security. How could anyone dream of remaining if they have no ability to defend themselves and their families from an onslaught? This is the primary reason that so many "settlers" have been disarmed of their legal weapons. This is the reason that the "Jewish Legion" was outlawed with most of the membership being stripped of their weapons of defense. The Jews in Yesha are clearly being abandoned and a passive greenlight has been given to attack and soften the Jewish civilian population living here. Now, for the story at hand. Thursday afternoon, Jeffrey Seath and Shmulik Bezalel were arrested at the port in Haifa waiting to release a container of tools shipped to Jeff from the states. Jeff, a 37 year old new immigrant to Tapuach Israel, converted to Judaism, and came home to Israel several months ago. He came to Israel during these critical times to help secure "settlements" with his specially trained tracking dogs. In spite of the news black-out related to his and Shmulik's arrest, the attornies who have been prevented from seeing their clients claim that more arrests are on the way and that Jeff is being accused of importing a weapon or parts of a weapon. Shmulik had evidently driven Jeff to the port and why exactly they are holding him remains unclear. As far as I am concerned Jeff is innocent until proven guilty. The fact is that Jeff comes from North Carolina where guns are bought and sold over-the-counter. I have no idea if Jeff made the stupid error of bringing one of his licensed weapons from the states to Israel on his lift. It is clear that the police plan on rounding up more people, very likely including myself the former leader of the outlawed Jewish Legion. I am not hiding and I am not running away. I did nothing wrong and I will not behave like a fugitive on the run. Further more, while I am not condoning weapon smuggling into Israel, I find it hard to condemn anyone for taking basic measures to defend himself, his community or his family, especially when the government refuses to offer all of the necessary defense to its citizens for political reasons in order to appease the Arabs and international community. That having been said, I must again stress that I have no idea if Jeff brought anything in his lift that would be considered illegal in Israel. The Israeli government plans on splashing the papers with headlines on Sunday concerning the arrest of the new "Jewish Legion" underground composed of "settlers" and all of the other nonsense they will try and sell to the public. The case is being censored from the media now so that they can carefully direct the flow of news and guide the content of what is leaked on Sunday. They will probably come around Sat night or Sunday to use this isolated private lift story to justify sweeping arrests and further closure of the already closed Jewish Legion. The state obviously plans on magnifying this story out of all proportion, judging by the amount of state sponsored and other media that were waiting like vultures outside of the courthouse Friday afternoon, as the Jerusalem Judge remanded Jeff and Shmulik to jail for further investigation, at least until next Wednesday. For those of you who have supported me and the various projects I direct on behalf of Israel and Jewish defense, please continue to support these projects. Dont allow the authorities to silence me or destroy the vital programs I have started. The raising of defense dogs for Israel will continue, regardless of any arrest that may be carried out against me. The vital referendum to save Israel will continue. The Voice of Judea will continue, with G-d's help and with your generous support. Now more than ever I appeal to you for desperately needed funds for Jeffrey and Shmulik's defense as well as for the defense of others such as myself who may be arrested in spite of the fact that we did nothing wrong whatsoever. Please help our defense and help us spread the Jewish message of truth and survival in Israel by sending a generous contribution to: Yekutiel Guzofsky POB 6592 Jerusalem Israel. If you wish to continue to sponsor our Canine efforts write a check out
to
If it is for the referendum write to
If it is for our defense write check to
All of these programs continue to operate business as usual. My loyal freinds here in Israel will no doubt pick up where I have left off and continue to publish posters, news, commentary and the rest to inform you and other sane Jews about what is really happening here. The best place to look for updates concerning this and other vital news is http://www.voiceofjudea.com On 4 separate occasions our boys saved lives and helped the IDF catch terrorists. We have never been associated or convicted of any acts of terrorism but that has not stopped the local authorities from harrassing us. This is just another example. I am the founder and editor of Voice of Judea I was the co-leader of Kahane Chai together with Binyamin Zev Kahane, who was brutally assassinated with his wife as was his father Rabbi Meir Kahane. I am also proud of my affiliations with Rabbi Kahane. I believe he was a great Jew who offered the only real solutions that can yet save Israel. His idea to launch a referendum in Israel was also a brilliant idea. I am continuing to launch a similar independent referendum -- see http://www.referendumforisrael.com and please vote. Let the people of Israel decide: Should Israel expel the "settlers" or the Arabs? I have also been indicted for "incitement" for presenting this alternative disengagement referendum. I am not scared of the Israeli police. Their hysteria and persecution of people like me, show how desperate they are and how much they indeed realize that we enjoy the support of the grassroots and masses. It is only a question of time and they know that. The police and their prisons do not scare me, nor do the Arabs. I am much more scared and frightened of Jewish apathy. Dont stand by Idly please help now. Send a check to the above address and join us.. To be continued if free to do so... Shalom, please help us. With your help we will succeed. Yekutiel Guzofsky Contact Lee Caplan at leescaplan@yahoo.com |
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GAZA SETTLERS ARE ANGRY AND DEPRESSED
Posted by Lee Caplan, June 10, 2006. |
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This was written by Sheldon Kirshner and it appeared June 8, 2006 at Canadian Jewish News (www.cjnews.com/viewarticle.asp?id=8998). |
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Two thousand disoriented Israelis wait for better days in a hastily erected camp off a busy highway connecting Ashdod with Ashkelon. For the past eight months, since Israel's unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, they have lived in Nizzan, a bleak encampment carved out from the lush fields of Nizzanim, a kibbutz near the Mediterranean Sea captured and destroyed by Egypt during the 1948 War of Independence. The Jews of Nizzan, the overwhelming majority of whom are Orthodox, represent the largest concentration of former Gaza settlers repatriated to Israel. Five hundred of the 1,700 Gaza families are in Nizzan, which was partially developed by the Jewish National Fund. As a community, Nizzan consists of identical 90-square metre, tan-coloured four bedroom cottages that resembles a raw North American suburban subdivision. The other settler families have been scattered by the wind to Yad Binjamin, south of Ashkelon; to a scruffy tent city adjacent to Yad Mordechai, a kibbutz near Gaza; and to rented quarters throughout the country and in the West Bank. David Bonfad, a 56-year-old settler from Neve Dekalim, seems typical of the evacuees in Nizzan. Born in the development town of Sederot, he was a kibbutznik in Sde Eliyahu before settling in Gaza in 1985 with his family. "I was looking for a community, a good life," he said. An observant Jew who sports a knitted yarmulke favoured by Israeli religious nationalists, Bonfad was also attracted to Gaza by a messianic belief in the Greater Israel philosophy. "My whole life has been ideological," he explained. "I thought I would spend the rest of my days in Gaza. It was clear." Though he waxes nostalgic about Gaza, populated by some 1.3 Palestinians, Neve Dekalim left deep psychic scars on him. His beloved teenaged daughter, Shimreet, was murdered there by Palestinian terrorists. Bonfad said adieu to Neve Dekalim prior to the Aug. 15 deadline imposed by the Israeli government. Today, he can hardly believe that he will never set foot in Gaza again. "I did not think God would let it happen," he mused. "Lots of things are unpredictable. We don't understand what God will do." A sad, ethereal man who still grieves for his late daughter and has created a shrine in her honour, Bonfad regards his departure from Gaza as an expulsion and the government's decision as a betrayal. At Neve Dekalim, where one-third of the residents were engaged in agriculture, he ran the local post office and supplemented his income as a handyman and plumber. In Nizzan, he is in charge of organizing recreational activities for the settlers, most of whom are unemployed, angry and depressed about their fate. "I'm back to square one," said Bonfad, who has received only a portion of a government compensation package to which he is entitled. "I have to build a house and find a job. We were once normal people, but now we're under psychological care. I have trouble concentrating, and I can't sleep at night." Bonfad's second daughter, 15, who was born and raised in Gaza, has been emotionally scarred by the disengagement. "She was assured by many rabbis that the withdrawal would never happen. Now she and other young people are confused." He rents a cottage for $450 (US) a month. Water and electricity are extra. As if invidiously comparing his home in Gaza with his current dwelling in Nizzan, he said, "It's too hot in summer and too cold in winter, as well as poorly insulated. When you close the front door, the whole house shakes." Bonfad expects permanent housing in Nizzan to be ready within a year and a half. In the interval, he wallows in sorrow. "It's hard for me to believe that I can ever replicate my life in Gaza here." Like Bonfad, Arik Harpaz, 50, is something of a refugee in his own land. A secular Jew from Elei Sinai, in the northern tip of Gaza, Harpaz lives in a tent opposite a gas station and gift shop owned by Yad Mordechai, a kibbutz besieged by Egypt in 1948 but recaptured by the Israeli army shortly afterward. To him, Elei Sinai was like a dream come true, at least until his 19-year-old daughter, Liron, and her boyfriend, Assaf Yitzhaki, 21, were gunned down in cold blood by Palestinians on Oct. 2, 2001, a year after the eruption of the second intifadah. Recalling his halcyon days in Gaza, he said, "Doors were unlocked. Children frolicked on the streets." But after his daughter's untimely death, Harpaz and his family never ceased mourning. "We were broken, though we got a lot of support from our friends. This was very important. We were not alone." Of the 90 families from Elei Sinai, 30 live in Yad Mordechai's flyblown tent city, which has its own communal kitchen and dining room. The remainder of the settlers are found in neighbouring kibbutzim and in Ashkelon, pining for the moment when they move to new quarters in Palmachim, a kibbutz near Rishon Le Zion, in the heart of Israel. "We are in the process of negotiations," said Harpaz, "but nothing is ready as yet. The bureaucracy is killing us." He has received not a penny in compensation so far, perhaps because he and about half of the settlers in Elei Sinai refused to heed repeated warnings to leave before the mid-August deadline. "We decided that money was not everything. We wanted to show the government that we were not afraid." The army evacuated them on Aug. 21. "There was no violence. We didn't touch the soldiers. We had one last Sabbath meal with them before we walked out peacefully to the border. One of the soldiers cried as we left." Elei Sinai was established in 1982, amid pristine sand dunes and marvellous views of the Mediterranean Sea. The first six families were from Yamit, a model settlement Israel gave up as part of its 1979 peace treaty with Egypt. Virtually everyone in Elei Sinai, including Harpaz, an expert in hydraulic systems, commuted to jobs in Israel. A former resident of Ashkelon, he arrived in Elei Sinai in 1990. "I simply wanted to give my three daughters a nice place to live. We fell in love with the scenery. It had nothing to do with ideology." He added, "I never dreamed I would leave, since, in terms of distance, we were so close to Israel. I was shocked when [Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon announced his disengagement plan. Sharon broke his promise and went the other way. I would have been prepared to leave my house for real peace, but not for this," he said in a reference to Hamas' victory in the recent Palestinian Authority legislative election and Islamic Jihad's continuing Qassam rocket attacks against Israeli border towns and kibbutzim since Israel's pullout. "The Palestinians have won through terror." Meanwhile, Harpaz lives from day to day in the unsightly tent city. "It's not too nice in this place. We have no privacy." Harpaz's fellow setttler, Keren Ratzabi, an observant 30-year-old English teacher from Gush Katif, is bitter, too. She and her unemployed husband currently live in an army barrack in Ashkelon, but hope that they and their four children will soon move into a house near Kiryat Gat, north of Be\er Sheva. Born in Rehovot, she worked in Dimona and Mizpe Ramon before landing in Gush Katif two years ago. "We went to Gaza for faith and ideology," she declared, passion oozing out of every pore. "We belonged in Gaza, which was ours from the beginning. We came to claim ownership. Great Jewish communities existed in Gaza. We came back, and it was ours. I knew it was the right thing to do. This area was ours. Gaza is ours. We'll be back. Nothing will stop us, but it will take time. You need to have faith. The nation of Israel is not aware of this, of our right to this land. What was promised to us as a nation should belong to us. The government really encouraged us to go to Gaza. Suddenly, it's a mistake?" The withdrawal has ruined the lives of countless settlers, said Ratzabi, who does not qualify for compensation payments. "People became sick. There were divorces. Families fell apart. People are paying a high price for having done the right thing. It's very hard." Not surprisingly, she has mixed feelings about Sharon, the architect of the Gaza disengagement. "I feel sorry for him," she said, referring to the stroke that incapacitated him on Jan. 4. "But he hurt his brothers. I can't feel angry, but I pity him." Contact Lee Caplan at leescaplan@yahoo.com |
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DON'T BLAME ISRAEL FOR THE GAZA BEACH TRAGEDY!
Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, June 10, 2006. |
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Terrible things happen when there is war. If indeed an errant Israeli missile landed on Arab civilians on a Gaza beach, perhaps 400 yards from an intended target, we must question why Hamas authorities allowed their citizens to remain so close to a launching ground for rockets aimed at southern Israeli towns. Israel cannot tolerate an intolerable situation, thus must retaliate against unprovoked air strikes by Islamic terrorists. It is unfortunate that innocent Arabs become victims of this needless war, but blame squarely rests with belligerent Arabs who continue to bomb Israel from Gaza, despite the fact that the Jewish State stupidly ceded its land to those Arabs who in turn morphed Gaza into a criminally led chaotic cesspool. Of course, the New York Times in its 06/10/2006 edition, splashes a marquee front page photograph of an agonizing Arab girl next to her dead relative on that Gaza beach, no doubt to evoke sympathy for so-called Palestinians and antipathy towards those big bad Israeli presumed occupiers who no longer have anything to do with Gaza. In fairness, might that "world class" media outlet have considered displaying a few Arab rocket launchers as well, promoting the true reason why this accident of war could have happened in the first place? Hamas now declares it will resume attacking Israel. Huh! What has it been doing up till now? Is Hamas not responsible for the aforementioned rocket attacks on southern Israel, allowing terrorist Arabs to continually threaten the safety of Jewish Israeli citizens? Is Hamas not truly responsible for the Israeli response and consequential tragedy on the Gaza beach? Indeed, might such Jew-despising Hamas zealots be a quantum leap more upset at recent pinpoint Israeli air strikes sending Islamic terrorist murderers, including top commander Jamal Abu Samhadana, to their well-deserved delusional resting places in Allahland paradise amidst virgins? Ordinary Arab citizens, allowed to picnic near rocket launchers aimed at Israel, are little more than propaganda fodder for Hamas. One might even wonder if Hamas set them up, hoping to capitalize on predictable worldwide sympathy garnered by any lethally misfired Israeli missile, or in fact if Hamas itself could be responsible for the shelling of its own people; one never knows! Ehud Olmert must listen carefully to the rhetoric spewing from Gaza. Hamas will certainly direct its homicide/suicide martyring lunatics toward Israel now that it has an excuse. Israeli forces have every good reason to preempt this madness. "The Israeli massacres represent a direct opening battle, and that means the earthquake in the Zionist cities will resume. We will respond at the appropriate place and time," threatens Hamas. Declarations like that cannot be ignored. Israeli troops must forthwith eliminate Hamas, in much the same way that a surgeon performs radical surgery on a malignant tumor. Nothing else makes sense! Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at luniglicht@snip.net |
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GUSH KATIF EVACUEES: WE HAVE NOT BEEN COMPENSATED
Posted by Bryna Berch, June 9, 2006. |
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Maybe there'd be more money to settle the refugees if the Government didn't spend so much money on propaganda trying to convince everyone that everything is rosy and almost all the refugees are comfortably settled. This comes from Ynet and is archived at www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3260746,00.html It was written by Aviram Zino. |
Former Tel Katifa settlers do not qualify for full compensation as their Gush Katif community is 'unrecognized' by Disengagement Authority. 'It's been 10 months now and no decision has been made,' one evacuee says Israeli bureaucracy at its best: Residents of the former Gaza Strip settlement of Tel Katifa, who were evacuated last summer, claimed that the Disengagement Authority refused to compensate them because it does not recognize the settlement. A special committee determined that Tel Katifa residents qualify for a lesser compensation, while in reality they received no compensation at all. The special committee appointed for Tel Katifa evacuees was instructed by the Disengagement Authority to ignore the evacuees' request to recognize Tel Katifa as a community. Ynet obtained documents which prove that the government did recognize Tel Katifa as a community. 
Tel Katifa was established a little before the Oslo Accords on land that belonged to Kfar Darom community, with construction permits from then Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer. Families that moved there initiated the settlement recognition process, as required by law. According to Attorney Yossi Fux who represents Tel Katifa residents, the government did refer in its decision to evacuate the Gaza Strip to Tel Katifa as a community. Today, Tel Katifa evacuees live in trailer community in the Lachish district, where they are determined to rebuild their community. 'How am I going to furnish the house?' "We are very disappointed by the government's treatment. We feel that not only did it add insult to injury after the expulsion, the humiliated treatment we experienced is very enraging," said Yael Langzem, a 33-year-old evacuee. According to Langzem, nearly a year after the evacuation life is very difficult. "I am a mother of seven and all I received so far is very minimal, and it's not enough. I'm unemployed, and for six months we have been living without a home and now that we want to move forward, we can't' afford a house. How am I going to furnish the house? I don't understand why they haven't made any decisions yet? It's been 10 months and no decision yet," said Langzem Attorney Fux pointed the finger at the Disengagement Authority. "The fact that 10 months after the uprooting the expelled haven't been compensated is a mark of disgrace to the Authority. It was even clear to Sharon's government that Tel Katifa was counted as one of the 25 communities designated for evacuation. Who gives the Authority the right to delay compensation to the evacuees?" he asked. The attorney suggested to the Authority that Tel Katifa residents be recognized as residents of Kfar Darom, as their identification cards show, but claimed his suggestion was rejected out of hand. Disengagement Authority officials responded that they were following the evacuation-compensation law which was legislated by the Knesset, and that their actions are derivatives of law. "According to the law, Tel Katifa is not among the recognized communities list. A special committee examined the issue and decided to approve initial advances to Tel Katifa residents. At the same time, Justice Ministry officials and the Attorney General have decided on criterions for a special payment to unrecognized communities, a process which ended recently. Next Monday, Tel Katifa residents will be able to voice their claims in special committee on the issue of the legality of their community," an official said. |
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THE FINKELSTEIN SYNDROME
Posted by Jen Kutner, June 9, 2006. |
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This was written by Roz Rothstein, one of the founders of StandWithUs, which is an international education and advocacy group with offices in Detroit, New York, Los Angeles and Jerusalem. Roz currently serves as the StandWithUs National Director. |
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In May of 2006, I witnessed the bizarre rantings of the author and Holocaust revisionist Norman Finkelstein at UC Irvine. This was the second time that I had the misfortune of sitting through his lecture, the first time was at Cal State Fullerton. Finkelstein uses his identity as the child of Holocaust survivors to gain credibility, distorting history by omitting context, and defaming well-respected figures for the purpose of promoting hatred against the state of Israel and minimizing the horrors of the Holocaust. His lectures include predictable rants against Israel, promotion of conspiracy theories regarding the reason his own new book, Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, (University of California Press, 2005), was not reviewed, and a strange continuous bashing of Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz for writing "The Case for Israel." He spends an inordinate amount of time lecturing about Joan Peters' book From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine, and calls Survivor Eli Wiesel the "clown in the Holocaust circus." How twisted is Finkelstein's sense of human decency? As the daughter of Holocaust survivors, I find Finkelstein beyond despicable. I believe he openly and methodically lies in order to promote his own anti- Israel agenda. It is well known that some children of Holocaust Survivors carry severe scars and wounds that actually manifest in peculiar psychological behavior. For two decades I worked as a licensed family therapist, and I believe that some day soon there will be a formal psychological syndrome that would account for self-hating Jews like Norman Finkelstein. Perhaps the syndrome will even be named after him: The Finkelstein Syndrome. It's inconceivable to me that Finkelstein might achieve tenure at De Paul University in Chicago, where he presently teaches his bizarre theories. That he is an assistant professor there is, in my view, a badge of shame for De Paul. His true occupation is as a member of a traveling circus, a freak show of anti-Semites who promote anti-Israel propaganda from campus to campus. He openly admits to having high regard for Hezbollah on his website, and promotes the false notion that "scholars widely agree that Israel ethnically cleansed the Palestinian people in 1948." Even the historians that he quotes, disagree with him. He denies the evidence that Arab leaders told Palestinian Arabs to leave Israel in 1948 so that the combined forces coming from Arab countries could exterminate the Jews, after which the Arabs who had lived in the region could return. He denies the overwhelming evidence that this was the case, contained within periodicals and confirmed radio announcements at the time -- among them The Near East Arabic Broadcasting Station, The New York Herald, London Economist, Time Magazine, and Jordanian Daily Newspaper -- that clearly reflected the push by Arab leaders to encourage the flight of their brethren for the purpose of the annihilation of the Jews and their reborn state. A compiled list of critical quotes from reputable sources regarding this issue is available at http://standwithus.com/campus/pdfs/flyers/ArableaderstellPalestinianstoFleein1948.pdf. I cannot help but wonder why Finkelstein fails to mention that approximately 150,000 Palestinian Arabs chose to remain in Israel in 1948, becoming Arab Israelis with descendants and friends that now number over one million. Growing numbers of Arab Israeli citizens, with representation in Israel's Knesset, do not match with his accusation of ethnic cleansing. I once wrote a letter to Finkelstein, because I was frustrated after having attended one of his deeply disturbing lectures. I asked him why he lied to well meaning students during his lecture. I showed him the evidence that the flight of the Palestinian Arabs from Israel in 1948 was in part due to the war, and in part due to the clear calls from Arab countries. I showed him evidence from credible sources. I asked him to refute them, but he did not in his reply. Instead he told me to read his book, and he told me that our conversation was at an end. As I sat watching Finkelstein this second time, I looked around the room at the eager 300 to 400 students who came to hear him speak. Many of them were already anti-Israel and enjoyed his presentation because it supported and expanded their own prejudices. Others, however, had heard that a controversial speaker was coming and came in good faith, with open minds. I watched for three straight hours at UC Irvine, as students were poisoned by the Finkelstein Syndrome. I walked away feeling saddened by the notion that young hearts and minds were affected by a man of such dubious scholarship and malicious intent. What remedy do we have when a hateful propagandist and academic fraud like Finkelstein comes to town? As the national director of an organization that believes in free speech, the only power we have is to expose him as a failed scholar who lacks balance, as a man with an obsessive agenda and as a man who respects the likes of Hezbollah. Maybe if these things about him become more widely known, the people who may have the misfortune of attending his future lectures will come for entertainment rather than for education. Contact Jen Kutner by email at JenKutner@aol.com |
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THE PEACE PARTNERS ARE IN MOURNING
Posted by Steven Plaut, June 9, 2006. |
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"Hamas, Gaza Arabs, Mourn Al-Zarqawi's Death," This appeared in israelnn.com/news.php3?id=105121 |
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An official Hamas announcement mourns the "murder" of Al-Zarqawi, the "jihad warrior" who "fell in the name of Allah." Gaza Arabs rallied and demanded revenge for the killing. Hamas officials read aloud the official government declaration, which accused the Americans of effecting a "Crusader" killing of the Al-Qaeda leader on Islamic homeland territory. In Khan Yunis, near what was once Gush Katif in southern Gaza, young PA Arabs demanded revenge for the killing of Al-Zarqawi. Holding aloft signs with his picture, they demanded terrorist attacks to promote the "justice" for which they claimed Al-Zarqawi fought. A Qatari newspaper quoted a "Palestinian," Hisham Abu Subhi, as saying, "I am extremely sad. No real Muslim will be happy hearing of his death. He was fighting the Americans and laid down his life for Islam." "The Hamas solidarity with Al-Zarqawi is not surprising," reports Arutz-7's Dalit HaLevy. "In addition to ideological similarities, Hamas conducts ties with suspected terrorist affiliates of Al-Qaeda." On March 26, for instance, Hamas senior Muhammad Siam met near the Pakistani-Afghani border with Sayad Salah A-Din, the head of the Hazb Al-Mujahedin terror group in Kashmir, which ran training camps in Afghanistan and which is suspected of having ties with Al-Qaeda. HaLevy reports that Siam heads a group that supports all-out war against "infidels" and has issued a blanket religious dispensation for suicide attacks against Israelis. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist,
a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author
of "The Scout." He frequently comments -- both seriously and
satirically -- on Israeli politics and the left wing academic
community. His website address is
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OUTGOING ISRAEL SECURITY CHIEF EILAND: GAZA RETREAT ACHIEVED NOTHING
Posted by Renalee Colon, June 9, 2006. |
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This comes from Zionist Organization of America (email@zoa.org). It was issued June 5, 2006. |
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<>Outgoing Israel Security Chief Eiland: Gaza retreat achieved
nothing. Neither will Olmert retreat. Palestinian State won't work
New York -- In an interview with the leading Israeli daily Ha'aretz (June 4), outgoing head of National Security Council, General Giora Eiland described the Gaza retreat/evacuation plan as "contributing nothing to the solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." Eiland added that Olmert's Judea & Samaria retreat/evacuation plan "does not lead to long-term stability...the solution of two states for two peoples, is an impossible solution...there is not enough area to contain two states between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, in order for Israel to maintain a defensible border it needs at least 12 percent of Judea & Samaria...the second mistake is that even a Palestinian State with 100% of Gaza and 97% of Judea & Samaria is not viable. Such a country will be poor, radical, restive." Eiland added that the Olmert Retreat Plan "will not solve the conflict...the Palestinian State will be a radical Hamas state, not satisfied and not viable. There will be continuous instability." He also said there was no "organized discussion by the Israeli government on whether the Gaza withdrawal was the right move," and stated that Israeli PM Ehud Olmert has not discussed the new retreat/evacuation plan with him saying there has not been a discussion in the government establishment on whether the Olmert retreat/evacuation plan is good for Israel. When asked whether the decision-making process in Israel appears sound, Eiland bluntly answered, "no." Minister of Housing, Meir Sheetrit told Ha'aretz (June 5) that "what Eiland said is absolutely correct. Before the implementation of the Gaza withdrawal there were few discussions, mostly on the compensation law. After the withdrawal there was never a discussion at any forum in order to examine the results and reach conclusions." Sheetrit added that there has yet to be any "proper discussions" held on Olmert's withdrawal plan for Judea and Samaria. Senior Knesset members Dan Cohen (Meretz) and Abraham Ravitz (UTJ) yesterday demanded that Chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Tzachi Hanegbi, scheduled special hearings on Eiland's views. They called it a "political-defense bombshell," which necessitated an urgent debate. They stated that PM Olmert, and Defense Minister Peretz, should both testify about the alleged "faulty handling" of political/security issues by the government. ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, "General Eiland"s statements on the Olmert plan for further unilateral withdrawals in Judea & Samaria mirror the arguments made to the ZOA last month by former Israel Defense Force Chief, General Moshe Ya'alon, that a two-state solution is a mistaken fantasy, and will lead to war. When the former Israel Defense Force Chief and the former head of Israel's National Security Council unambigorously warn about the danger of handing over more territory to the Hamas/Palestinian Authority regime, the Olmert government should listen carefully and reconsider the stated policy on further unilateral withdrawals. It is deeply distressing to learn that the previous Israeli government had virtually no serious discussions on the pros and cons of the Gaza retreat. It is more distressing to learn that the Olmert administration also has not had critical discussions of the benefits and negative consequences of this new retreat plan. The ZOA urges the Olmert administration to immediately conduct intensive and wide-ranging discussions on the pros and cons of Olmert's even more expansive and far-reaching plan." Contact Renalee Colon at renalees@yahoo.com |
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ISRAELI CIVIL STRIFE; THE ILLOGIC OF WITHDRAWAL; BUSH'S HYPOCRITICAL PROMISE
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 9, 2006. |
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Most of you know that PM Ben-Gurion got Rabin to shell the Altalena, bringing weapons and recruits both for Ben-Gurion's Haganah and Begin's Irgun units in Jerusalems. Ben-Gurion would rather forfeit the arms badly needed against the better armed Arabs, than miss this chance to eliminate his rival, Begin. This risking of civil war later is described by the Left as stamping out incipient civil war. Ben-Gurion also got Rabin to have the Jews trying to get off the burning ship shot down. So much for Ben-Gurion's patriotism in what was a political assassination attempt. Not in the accounts I read is the part played by Americans in it. Americans volunteered as pilots, mostly bringing in airplanes from abroad. Ben-Gurion ordered them to bomb the ship. They refused. Pointing out that they were volunteers and not part of the Israeli Army, they said that they did not come to Israel to kill hundreds of Jews. One of those pilots, a Col. Lichtman, observes that a one-sided fratricide also has been taking place in Gaza and in the hilltop settlements, thence in Judea-Samaria as a whole (from my Israeli associate). The government does the beating and lets the Arabs do the killing. FIRST THE HILLTOPS AND THEN THE SETTLEMENTS With a growl of self-righteous indignation, Israel's new Defense Minister Peretz (not Shimon Peres) set as his priority the removal of Jews from hilltop outposts in Judea-Samaria. They are illegal, he says. Peretz, himself, organized illegal strike actions, such as blocking the roads, and closed down the ports. He should be the object of indignation, not the author of it. His affirmation of dedication to legality would be more convincing if he, or his predecessors, ever had removed Arabs from their hilltop settlements, built on State land not given to them. Oh, it's nice to be an Arab in the Territories or Israel, for life is inexpensive when one doesn't have to pay for one's land, building permits, code compliance, and real estate taxes! It's safe to hate and fight the Jews, for one gets to stay and the Jewish government chases out the Jews. Would you call it normal for a government to turn the countryside over to the genocidal enemy? The whole government concept of permits and legality is the wrong way to approach Zionism. The Arabs are waging a war of extermination. Israel should be fighting back, to get the Arabs out and to acquire uncontested title to that part of the Jewish homeland in Judea-Samaria and Gaza, which happens to be key to the survival of the Jewish people not only militarily but spiritually. Retreat means becoming dispirited, and without spirit, dissolution. Israel has a peculiar notion of illegality. Whatever the regime or the Supreme Court says at the moment is illegal, is illegal. The Israeli government requires a host of permits for everything. It keeps legal status in limbo, because the Byzantine rules take so long to pursue. This gives these governments of bad faith the power to intervene and stop the process, leaving people's live savings wasted. The government reneges on promises of approval, and then has the chutzpah to condemn people following the rules for doing things illegally. How did Jews get to the original settlements? With difficulty. The government had no plan for that section of the Jewish homeland regained in defense against Arab aggression, an area to which the Jewish people have the most legitimate claim. This area is the unallocated portion of the Palestine Mandate for the Jewish national home, which Mandate requires "close settlement on the land by the Jews." But the government opposed the people's exercising initiative to settle the land. (Initiative seems to be against Israel's whole statist system.) Even the right-wing Begin had pioneers dragged down from the hills with wanton brutality. Persistence usually prevailed. It is a hell of a way of gaining legitimacy! Some beautiful and productive communities were built. Now the government plans to destroy them. What a waste! (The proper approach would have been a comprehensive plan to induce the Arabs to leave and for the Jews to keep the whole of it. P.A. bankruptcy is another "God-given opportunity" to do that. As a fall-back position, the government should have determined what major part to keep, and get the Arabs to leave that part, and then the Jews would be able to settle more compactly in the rest. Absent a plan, Jews settled in scattered areas, not enough to dominate them, however. Now the isolation of those more scattered settlements is the pretext for removing the Jews.) After running the gamut of government troops, the settlers sacrificed some of their own lives to Arab terrorists. Arabs shot at them along the roads or at bus stops. The government made it easy for the terrorists, by allowing Arabs to settle close enough to the roads to provide cover for terrorists, making small roads too dangerous, inasmuch as the government does not root out terrorism. The government then bans Jewish travel on those roads, thereby concentrating the Jews into more easily struck targets on the remaining roads. Brave Zionist pioneers had to stake claims for their country against the opposition of a most un-brave and unimaginative government. I've stood on mountaintop settlements during times of sweltering heat in the coastal lowland of Tel Aviv. I felt the cool breeze, smelled the fresh air, saw all the way to the coast, and felt the freedom. It was obvious that from such mountaintops in Arab hands, terrorists could fire rifles and much worse into the valleys of Israel, itself, where live masses of Jews. The Olmert-Peretz plan would put all of Israel under the gun. That in the name on some days of security, on other days of guaranteeing Jewish majority, o still other days some other catchy rationalization. First Peretz would destroy the hilltop outposts of settlements on grounds of illegality, then the settlements, which are acknowledged as legal. Then what's the hurry with the outposts? As for the Jewish souls of Peretz, Peres, and Olmert, those decayed long ago. JIHAD WINNING The Taliban expect to recapture Kabul, soon. They control much territory, now. The Netherlands is deporting an outspokenly anti-Muslim member of Parliament. The Wahabbis have taken over a province in Pakistan, murdering their opponents, whom they leave in the streets to rot in the sun. In Turkey, an Islamist solider murdered a judge. The government is Islamist, gradually wrapping its tentacles around the supposedly secularist state. Radical Islamists control Bangladesh (formerly known for moderation). Then there is unrestrained Iran (which is influential in Iraq). Now comes PM Olmert with a proposal to expel the Jews from 90% or more of Judea-Samaria (which the Arabs, in their usual upside-down logic, call a "land-grab") and turn it over to Hamas, without gaining (the illusion of) peace and without ending terrorism. The Palestinian Arabs exult in having their enemy fulfill an early phase in its own conquest, the Arab plan being to whittle Israel down into inability to defend itself. The Islamists feel vindicated and invincible. Foreseeing victory, Israeli Arabs probably will organize their sedition more. (Israel has winked at their law-breaking and treasonous defiance, treating them as if they need affirmative action preferences.) Israelis would feel defeated, soldiers would feel wasted, and Israeli society would be disillusioned and divided (just when national unity is vital against the Islamists closing in). The spirit would dissolve from Zionism, and the Jews would disperse from Zion. WHERE IS THE LOGIC FOR WITHDRAWAL, HERE? Hillel Halkin writes regularly for various publications, such as Commentary and the NY Sun. For months, his articles have begun with an astute explanation of some situation. They usually conclude with a plea for large-scale, unilateral withdrawal. There is no logical connection between astute explanation and non-sequitur plea. Indeed, the explanations militate against the plea. But Mr. Halkin pushes on, as if obsessed. Such is the case with his May 23 Sun Op.-Ed.. The explanation is that the Arabs would not make peace with Israel. Abu Mazen might conceivably sign an agreement, but the Arabs would not keep it. They are too radical (and genocidal). They would demand extreme concessions from Israel. Israel should not give them concessions. Okay, so far. The plea is that the US support Israel's scheme to abandon 90% of Judea-Samaria to those very radicals. Wouldn't that amount to a very great concession? IRAN'S GOAL, in a nutshell "Stripped down to the bare essentials, the problem is that Iran is conducting a program aimed at producing nuclear weapons. Notwithstanding Iran's vehement denials, that conclusion is sustained by both the IAEA findings and Iran's own actions. Had Iran wanted to prove otherwise, it would have acted differently, negotiating with the world in good faith, suspending indefinitely its nuclear activities, admitting all past misdeeds and offering complete and unhindered openness to the IAEA inspectors. However, this is not the case. Instead, Iranian tactics have been to toy with the international community and buy time in order to promote its ultimate aim." The international community is easily toyed with. Russia and China rule out exercising force against Iran. Iran does not feel any coercion. Financial offerings didn't tempt it, for it didn't bargain for more. Apparently the regime's ideology takes precedence. Islam before money! High oil prices are providing plenty of money, not that its people benefit from it. Unless backed by force, diplomacy has no chance to succeed with Iran. Diplomats cannot appeal to Iran's leader by reason, for they think differently (sorry, lost citation). Can't appeal to their good nature, for Islam doesn't have that, it has zeal and ill will. ISRAELI ARMS FOR ABBAS' GUARD Israel plans to send arms to Abbas' bodyguard. The arms are to prevent his assassination, plotted by Islamic Jihad. Proponents contend that rifles don't much endanger Israel. But: (1) This undermines the Israeli campaign against aiding the P.A.; (2) P.A. forces already are well armed; and (3) Small arms already have killed many Jews (IMRA, 5/26, 26), as when PM Netanyahu gave the P.A. some. Israelis stupidly suicidal? Israel formerly had sided with Hamas, to keep Arafat in check, then with Arafat against Hamas. He would not repress Hamas. Neither would Abbas. It makes no sense for Israel to side with one terrorist against another. Let them eradicate each other! Let the P.A. lose that figurehead who is an extremist but who the West pretends is a moderate, to serve as an excuse for negotiating with the P.A. or sending it aid! BUSH'S HYPOCRITICAL PROMISE TO DEFEND ISRAEL Pres. Bush repeatedly promises to defend Israel from Iran. He calls Israel an ally. The promises, however, all are vague. He gives them no basis in law. (It is to be another of the increasingly frequent US betrayal of other countries, especially Israel.) He contradicts his affirmation of valuing Israel by demanding that it retreat to indefensible borders sure to attract Arab invasion. Israeli politicians accept the demands, piecemeal, although similar retreat has brought thousands of casualties and great insecurity. Those who imposed Oslo upon the country are responsible for about 1,500 deaths of their own people. They remain unpunished. Same for those who brought about the recent abandonment of Gaza, from which rockets now are striking into Israel (Winston Mid East Analysis, 5/25). Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
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SIGNIFICANCE OF AL-ZARQAWI'S DEATH
Posted by Mordechai Ben-Menachem, June 9, 2006. |
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Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, self-declared enemy of the Jews, Israel, the United States and its coalition members in Iraq, was killed in a targeted U.S. air strike Wednesday evening. It is valuable to analyze his targeted killings. There can be no doubt that this person was one of those rare monsters that the world is clearly a better place with his elimination. However, one must not misunderstand the placement of this act. This operation was an excellent tactical gain. It is NOT a strategic gain. The Arab world, as opposed to the Western world, is essentially a 'bottom-up' society. In the West, killing a central leader has a broad effect. Amongst the Arabs, this has a demoralizing effect and upsets plans, but it has no strategic value as what they do is not determined by individuals, but by basic philosophy. Even killing Bin-Laden and his basic chain of command, even a dismemberment of Al Qaeda (if that is even theoretically possible) would not have any strategic effect. Mordechai Ben-Menachem is at Ben-Gurion University. He can be reached by email at quality@computer.org |
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ISRAEL'S ATTEMPTED ESCAPE INTO "PEACE FOR A MOMENT"
Posted by Jerome S. Kaufman, June 9, 2006. |
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This was written by Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis) (Mail POB 982 Kfar Sava). IMRA's website address is http://www.imra.org.il |
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Years ago I attended a local panel discussion on the prospects for peace in the Middle East. The late Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz was one of the speakers, and he said something that both disappointed and angered me. In the course of the discussion I cited the long history of conflict in our region, much of which has nothing to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict, and asked Leibowitz what he thought the long-term prospects were for peace in the Middle East. Leibowitz replied that it was clear that peace, any peace, would not last forever, and that the most one could expect was peace for a few years, possibly decades. He added, though, that Israel must make every sacrifice and take every risk in order to get a state of peace, no matter how fleeting. There was no mystery about the difference in outlook between Leibowitz and myself: Being considerably closer to the grave than the cradle, the professor felt compelled to see peace in his time at any price, and for any period. Today there are many who are willing to sacrifice our security in the desperate hope that we will enjoy a moment of quiet in return. I say "moment" because it would be an insult to the intelligence of the people supporting these various schemes to assume that they are so incompetent in their analytical skills that they actually believe they are bringing long term peace and security via the programs they promote. And in the case of Prime Minister Olmert's retreat idea, he isn't even claiming retreat will bring us peace -- just possibly a temporarily easier conflict (this despite the horrific results of the retreat from Gaza that indicate that retreat will only worsen the situation). But is "peace for a moment" moral? This attitude of sacrificing the welfare of future generations for the sake of short-term gain runs counter to Jewish tradition. The story is told of Honi Hame'agel, the Jewish Rip Van Winkle, who saw an old man planting a carob tree. He asked the man why he was working so hard, since the tree would bear fruit only in 70 years. Replied the man: "I found a world with carobs because my forefathers planted them, and I say: I also plant a carob tree ... for my children after me." We owe it to ourselves, to previous generations who sacrificed so much to get us here as well as to the unborn future generations, to resist the temptation to forfeit the future in return for what at best may be momentary relief. Jerome S. Kaufman is National Secretary of the Zionist Organization of America. and host the Israel Commentary website (http://www.israel-commentary.org). |
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THE ISSUE IS NOT WHETHER HAMAS RECOGNIZES ISRAEL
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 8, 2006. |
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Mr. Henry Siegmans "The issue is not whether Hamas recognizes Israel," (UK Financial Times.com; June 8, 2006) is a masterful creation of fantasy and half-truth masquerading as analysis. Just about every assertion is false. "Hamas is determined that Palestinian recognition of Israel will not come about without Israel's recognition of Palestinian national rights" is a false statement. Hamas has a 20-year history of matching its rhetoric to its deeds. Promises of murder and destruction and annihilation of the Jewish state have been eloquently expressed in an endless relentless terror war with thousands of attacks, hundreds dead, and thousands wounded or maimed for life. Hamas is determined that there will be no peace until the last Israeli Jew is dead. Mr. Siegman has very conveniently turned reality upside down by ignoring Hamas' words and deeds. "Hamas declared a truce 18 months ago" is likewise a false statement. Hamas has committed a number terrorist acts since February of 2005 (that is why so many journalists state that Hamas has "for the most part", or "largely" stuck to the truce); but more important, it has planned, supported, and financed terrorism from some of the other dozen or so terrorist groups operating against Israel from the Gaza Strip. Thus, far from keeping to the truce, Hamas has created a "good cop/bad cop" game that has quite successfully duped Mr. Siegman and numerous other journalists and diplomats. "Ismail Haniyeh, prime minister in the Hamas-led government, ordered his ministers to seek practical co-operation with their Israeli counterparts" is misleading. The so called "practical co-operation" that Mr. Siegman proffers as evidence of Hamas' good will was the short-lived need to coordinate Israel's continuing to provide water and electricity to the Gaza Strip despite Hamas' declaration of war. "Mr. Haniyeh also confirmed that Hamas's self-declared truce is open-ended." Again Mr. Siegman turns reality upside down. Hamas' truce is certainly not "self-declared". Hamas and several other terror groups were bludgeoned into it by pressure from Egypt and other Arab countries whose purposes are not served by endless war. The "open-ended" nature of this truce is not, as Mr. Siegman implies, a positive development that allows for some peaceful resolution after the truce is over. Rather, per the pronouncements of various Hamas leaders, there is no commitment as to what will happen after the truce. Thus it is as likely, or perhaps even more likely, that Hamas will use the truce period as a time to re-arm, re-load, re-recruit, re-train, and re-deploy so that the war can be pursued to its ultimate success when the truce is over, or before. "But 40 years after the 1967 war, a Palestinian state does not exist. The politically consequential question, therefore, is whether Israel recognizes a Palestinian right to statehood, not the reverse." Odd that Mr. Siegman is ignorant of the sequence of events that occurred both before and after the six-day war. There could have been a Palestinian state in 1937, with the Peel partition plan (UK). Israel accepted, but the Arabs refused and went to war. And lost. Same in 1947 with the UN Partition Plan. Israel accepted but the Arabs went to war. And lost. Same in 1949, after the war; when Israel offered to return conquered territories in exchange for peace. The Arabs refused. Same in 1967, when, within weeks after the war, Israel offered to return some (maybe much, or even most, but not all) conquered territory, in exchange for peace. The Arabs refused. In 1979 when PM Begin made peace with Anwar al-Sadat, they both offered Arafat a place at the peace table, with the intention that a "Palestinian entity" would be the end result of peace talks. Arafat refused. In 1981, at the Fez conference, then King Fahd of Arabia offered a peace plan, including the creation of a Palestinian state, for the consideration of the Arab league. It never got past the drawing boards. The other Arab states refused because it would imply the recognition of Israel. In 1992, at the Madrid conference, the Palestinian representatives subordinated their priorities to those of Yassir Arafat (then in exile in Tunis), even flying to Tunis several times per week to consult with him. There could have been an independent Palestinian state then; but he had other plans. In 1993 at the Oslo Accords, Israel agreed to a phased withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, in exchange for an end to terror and for peace. That would have resulted in the creation of a Palestinian state; but Arafat chose instead to use his new-found power to wage his terror war. With the terrorism came Israel's need to re-occupy the West Bank in order to stop the attacks. In 2000, PM Baraq made what Saudi ambassador to Washington, prince Bandar bin Sultan, said was the best offer imaginable. Bandar told Arafat to take it. Arafat rejected it and started the 2nd Intifada. And in 2005, PM Sharon ceded all of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority. They could have turned it into the beginning of a state. Instead they turned it into Hamastan. Yet Mr. Siegman implies that since there is not yet a Palestinian state, Israel must somehow be at cause. As above, he has turned reality upside down. "Israel does not recognize a Palestinian right to statehood in the West Bank and Gaza". This is implicit in the Israeli government's decision that a Palestinian government that even wishes to place on the agenda of a peace negotiation the territorial changes made unilaterally by Israel in the West Bank, or the question of the Palestinian refugees, cannot be a partner for peace." Mr. Siegman is simply making stuff up. These two paragraphs are utter nonsense. Israel has recognized the Palestinian right to statehood 15 times since 1937. Arab nations, Arab armies, and Arab terrorists have torpedoed every opportunity. It is beyond incomprehensible that PM Olmert offers to cede most of the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority (PA) in exchange for peace, and the PA says no; but Mr. Siegman accuses Olmert of not recognizing Palestinian rights. It is similarly quite in defiance of rational thought that on one hand Israel has literally begged for peace before every Arab invasion, and after every Israeli victory, and does so even now as Qassams fall daily and bomb attacks, suicide bombers, and sniper attacks, occur almost weekly; yet Mr. Siegman thinks that it is Israel who is rejecting PA offers of peace. "Israel's government has left no doubt that even if Mr. Abbas's promised referendum passes by a large majority (indeed, even if Hamas were to sign up to it), Israel will not accept it as the basis for a peace process and will proceed to set its border with the Palestinians unilaterally". Finally Mr. Siegman gets something right. Israel has indeed stated that the current "prisoners' referendum" cannot be a basis for a peace process. And rightly so. The referendum states openly in paragraph 3 that fighting against Israel will continue, and in paragraph 10 that there will be every effort made to up-grade and strengthen and streamline and unify the Palestinian terror war against Israel. In addition to which there is no statement in the document to the effect that there should ever be peace with Israel. The document has nothing to do with peace. It is a plan for the re-vitalization of war via a united Hamas-Fatah front. No country would accept such a document as the basis for a peace process. Why should Israel? Mr. Siegman gets it wrong in every paragraph. Almost every assertion is a reversal of reality. Can he really be so totally ignorant of the dynamics of the Israel-Arab conflict? Or does he simply hope that his audience is? Henry Siegman is a senior fellow on the Middle East at the US's
Council on Foreign Relations and a visiting professor at the School
of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. This article
is archived at |
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What hope there may still be for avoiding a complete meltdown in the Palestinian occupied territories, not to speak of the hope of ever achieving a two-state solution, lies not with the initiative by Mahmoud Abbas,Palestinian Authority president, to put the two-state formula to a popular referendum but with the ruling Hamas movement's refusal to play by Israel's old rules. Those rules have in effect eliminated the prospect of viable Palestinian statehood and were intended to achieve that end. Hamas is determined that Palestinian recognition of Israel will not come about without Israel's recognition of Palestinian national rights, and that only an end to the occupation and Israel's acceptance of the principle that no changes in the pre-1967 borders can occur without Palestinian agreement (a principle enshrined in the road map that Israel pretends to have accepted) will constitute such recognition. The most widely respected Israeli security expert, Efraim Halevy, believes Israeli and American efforts to overthrow the Hamas regime aremisguided. A hawk who headedMossad, Israel's intelligence agency, under five prime ministers and served as Ariel Sharon's national security adviser, Mr Halevy is convinced these efforts damage Israel's vital interests. His view shocked members of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations when Mr Halevy addressed them recently in New York. He has held it for some time. In September 2003, he said Israel should signal to Hamas that if it "enter[s] the fabric of the Palestinian establishment, we will not view that as a negative development. I think that in the end there will be no way around Hamas being a partner in the Palestinian government". At that time, when Hamas had the support of only a fifth of the Palestinian population, Mr Halevy said: "Anyone who thinks it is possible to ignore such a central element of Palestinian society is simply mistaken." How much more so today, when Hamas enjoys majority support. Asked last week on Israeli television how he could justify advocating engagement with a terrorist organisation that does not recognise Israel's right to exist, Mr Halevy ridiculed the stale assumptions that underlie that question. Do not look at Hamas's rhetoric, he said, look at what it does: Hamas declared a truce 18 months ago and has committed no terrorist acts against Israel since. In spite of Hamas's refusal to change its theological rejection of Israel, Ismail Haniyeh, prime minister in the Hamas-led government, ordered his ministers to seek practical co-operation with their Israeli counterparts. Mr Haniyeh also confirmed that Hamas's self-declared truce is open-ended. Why should Israel care whether Hamas grants it the right to exist, Mr Halevy asked. Israel exists and Hamas's recognition or non-recognition neither adds to nor detracts from that irrefutable fact. But 40 years after the 1967 war, a Palestinian state does not exist. The politically consequential question, therefore, is whether Israel recognises a Palestinian right to statehood, not the reverse. Using Mr Halevy's criterion of looking at what a government does, not what it says, it is clear that -- its many declarations to the contrary not withstanding -- Israel does not recognise a Palestinian right to statehood in the West Bank and Gaza. The position of Ehud Olmert's government is that Israel's right to annex at will any parts of Palestinian territory east of the pre-1967 borders supersedes any Palestinian rights. This is implicit in the Israeli government's decision that a Palestinian government that even wishes to place on the agenda of a peace negotiation the territorial changes made unilaterally by Israel in the West Bank, or the question of the Palestinian refugees, cannot be a partner for peace. Israel's "concessions", such as the withdrawal from Gaza and isolated West Bank settlements, are intended to serve narrow Israeli interests. As noted by Peace Now's Settlement Watch, Israel is continuing to thicken its existing settlements and expanding the settlements' territorial boundaries for yet further expansions. In these circumstances, what is puzzling is not Hamas's refusal to accept Israel's dictates but the support given by the international community -- particularly by the European Union -- to Israeli efforts to isolate and overthrow Hamas. Israel's government has left no doubt that even if Mr Abbas's promised referendum passes by a large majority (indeed, even if Hamas were to sign up to it), Israel will not accept it as the basis for a peace process and will proceed to set its border with the Palestinians unilaterally. Should that turn out to be the case, will European leaders continue their support of Washington's incurable pandering to Israel's rightwing policies, or will they muster the political will to re-engage with the Palestinian Authority and provide the needed political and economic support for the Palestinians' achievement of their national rights? The answer to that question may well determine the future of the entire region. David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com |
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THE WAR ON TERRORISM CONTINUES
Posted by Unity Coalition for Israel, June 8, 2006. |
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Country Report on Terrorism 2005
TERRORIST SAFE HAVENS A terrorist safe haven is an area of relative security exploited by terrorists to indoctrinate, recruit, coalesce, train, and regroup, as well as prepare and support their operations. Physical safe havens are often found in under-governed territory or crossing international boundaries. Global communications and financial infrastructure, especially those created by electronic infrastructure such as the Internet, global media, and unregulated economic activity, can allow terrorists to fulfill many of the same functions without the need for a physical sanctuary. These "virtual" havens, are highly mobile, difficult to track, and difficult to control. Physical safe havens provide security for many senior terrorist leaders, allowing them to plan and to inspire acts of terrorism around the world. The presence of terrorist safe havens in a nation or region is not necessarily related to state sponsorship of terrorism. In most instances cited in this chapter, areas or communities serve as terrorist safe havens despite the government's best efforts to prevent this. Denying terrorists safe haven plays a major role in undermining terrorists' capacity to operate effectively, and thus forms a key element of U.S. counterterrorism strategy as well as the cornerstone of UN Security Council Resolution 1373 that was adopted in September 2001. UNSCR 1373 specifically targets terrorists' ability to move across international borders and find safe haven, to solicit and move funds, and to acquire weapons; it also calls on states that do not have laws criminalizing terrorist activity and support to enact such laws. Key Judgments:
"Virtual" Safe Haven Terrorists exploit electronic infrastructure such as the Internet, global media, and satellite communications for recruitment, training, planning, resource transfer, and intelligence collection between and among terrorists and terrorist groups. Like many others, terrorists view the Internet as the most powerful and inexpensive form of communication yet developed. Harnessing the Internet's potential for speed, security, and global linkage gives terrorists the ability to conduct many of the activities that once required physical haven, yet without the associated security risks. With the ability to communicate, recruit, train, and prepare for attacks, any computer may function essentially as a "virtual" safe haven. Closing these havens demands concerted action at the global and regional levels. The Internet also has empowered the enemy with the ability to produce and sustain its own public media outlets and to present its own distorted view of the world to further its agenda. Terrorists are placing encrypted messages in electronic files to hide photos, maps, and messages on innocent third-party websites, chat rooms, and bulletin boards. There are several thousand radical or extremist websites worldwide, many of which disseminate a mixture of fact and propaganda designed to challenge information gleaned from other sources. Traditions of tolerance, political asylum, and multiculturalism are key elements of open societies. The enemy has been savvy in exploiting this and in having a consistent message easily heard in the cacophony of the global media and the Internet. Countering the messages that terrorists propagate cannot be done quickly or easily; it must become part of a long-term strategy. Physical Safe Haven The remainder of this chapter provides a survey of the status of selected potential and physical safe havens worldwide. AFRICA The Trans-Sahara The sparsely inhabited Trans-Sahara region provides safe haven for terrorist groups operating in North and Northwest Africa.
Somalia Parts of Somalia, which has no functioning central government, have become havens for terrorist and other illicit activities, threatening the security of the whole region.
EAST ASIA The Sulawesi/Celebes Sea East Asia includes a maritime safe haven area composed of the Sulawesi/Celebes Sea and Sulu Archipelago, which sit astride the maritime boundary between Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. The physical geography of the thousands of islands in the region makes them very difficult for authorities to monitor. Thus, they are well suited to terrorist operations and activities, such as movement of personnel, equipment, and funds. This area represents a safe haven for the AQ-linked Jemaah Islamiya (JI) group.
EUROPE Although most of Europe is not a physical safe haven in a literal sense, domestic terrorist groups, as well as AQ and its associated terrorist cells, remain the principal groups of concern in Europe. North African Salafist groups are especially active, such as the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, the Armed Islamic Group, and the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat. Moreover, extremist groups recruit and proselytize heavily in some major European cities. The presence and activity of such terrorist cells was dramatically highlighted by the London bombings in July. In addition, terrorist groups opposed to the Middle East peace process such as HAMAS and Hizballah have active propaganda, fundraising, and other support activities in Europe. Mediterranean Smuggling, illegal immigration, and narcotics trafficking networks traverse the Mediterranean Sea between Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, providing opportunities for potential terrorist movement and support. Cyprus forms a transit and support hub for various organizations operating in the Eastern Mediterranean and Levant. The Kongra-Gel/PKK has an active presence in Cyprus on both sides of the buffer zone, which it reportedly uses as both a fundraising and transit point. The Kurdish community in the south of Cyprus is estimated at approximately 1,500. The Caucasus Over the past decade, insurgent activities in Chechnya, Daghestan, North Ossetia, and surrounding areas have created opportunities for establishing a terrorist safe haven in the north Caucasus. The Pankisi Gorge area of Georgia was previously noted as a safe haven; however, Georgian authorities were largely successful in eliminating it. Georgian internal troops continued to carry out operations to rid the Pankisi Gorge of terrorists. The identification and safe removal of hidden weapons caches in the Pankisi area enabled Georgian security forces to secure and protect it from terrorist acts or transit. Although border guard and customs reform continued, Georgia was still used to a limited degree as a transit state for weapons and money. Georgia made efforts to close its borders to those who wished to smuggle money, weapons, and supplies, but was hindered in particular by corruption at border checkpoints, as well as by lack of territorial integrity in the separatist areas of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. SOUTH & CENTRAL ASIA Afghan-Pakistan Border For decades, the mountainous and sparsely populated Afghan-Pakistani border has been an autonomous area, with little control by Islamabad or Kabul. The Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan have been a safe haven for AQ fighters since the fall of the Taliban in December 2001. The FATA also includes Islamist groups and local tribesmen who continue to resist the government's efforts to improve governance and administrative control at the expense of longstanding local autonomy. Bringing government services to this region, and turning an AQ safe haven into a regularly administered province of Pakistan, remains an important objective in the global war on terror. Through substantial efforts since 2004, the Government of Pakistan has deployed more than 80,000 security forces into the FATA and made some improvements in health care, education, and social services. These operations have disrupted the terrorists but also affected tribal institutions in the area, requiring efforts to build new political and economic institutions. Meanwhile, the Afghan Government, in concert with U.S. forces and the international community, continues efforts to build security on the Afghan side of the border. The border areas remain a contested region, however, with ongoing insurgent and terrorist attacks and AQ-linked propaganda activity. MIDDLE EAST Iraq Iraq is not currently a terrorist safe haven, but terrorists, including Sunni groups like al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI), Ansar al-Islam (AI), and Ansar al-Sunna (AS), as well as Shia extremists and other groups, view Iraq as a potential safe haven and are attempting to make it a reality. Terrorist groups coordinated and conducted attacks on Iraq's utility infrastructure and claimed responsibility for kidnappings and attacks on Iraqi personnel working at refineries and electrical stations. Terrorists' efforts to disrupt and destroy Iraq's energy infrastructure not only made the Iraqi Government appear incapable of providing essential services, but hindered economic development. These attacks also sought to undercut public and international support for Iraq. Efforts by the Iraqi Government, the United States, Coalition partners, and the international community are helping to thwart AQI's ambitions, but the battle is far from over. Not all of Iraq's neighbors have supported the international community in this effort. In particular:
Lebanon The Lebanese Government recognizes several terrorist organizations, including Hizballah, which holds several seats in Parliament, as "legitimate resistance groups" and permits them to maintain offices in Beirut and elsewhere around the country. The Lebanese Government recently agreed to work to control the weapons of Palestinian militias outside the refugee camps within six months and, for the first time, is discussing possible limits to Hizballah's arms. Although Syria withdrew its military forces in April 2005, it maintains an intelligence presence in Lebanon and continues to offer support and facilitate arms smuggling to Hizballah and Palestinian terrorist groups. Because the Government of Lebanon does not exercise effective control over areas in the south and inside the Palestinian refugee camps, terrorists can operate relatively freely in those areas. Yemen Several terrorist organizations continued to maintain a presence in Yemen throughout 2005. The Government of Yemen recognizes HAMAS and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) as legal organizations. HAMAS conducted extensive fundraising through mosques and other charitable organizations and maintains offices. In December, HAMAS leader Khaled Mishal visited Sanaa and met publicly with President Saleh. Al-Qaida's operational structure in Yemen has been weakened and dispersed, but concerns remain about the organization's attempts to reconstitute operational cells there. Yemen continues to increase its maritime security capabilities, but land border security along the extensive frontier with Saudi Arabia remains a problem, despite increased Yemeni-Saudi cooperation on bilateral security issues. THE AMERICAS Colombia Border Region This region includes the borders between Colombia on one side, and Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Panama, and Brazil on the other. Rough terrain, dense forest cover, and lack of government authority and presence in this area create a safe haven for insurgent and terrorist groups, including the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, and Panama have adopted an unstated policy mix of containment and non-confrontation with Colombian narcoterrorist groups, while Peru pursues the domestic terrorist group Sendero Luminoso (SL). FARC used remote areas to house prisoners and hostages and to stage and train for terrorist attacks in cities. The Triborder Area Suspected supporters of Islamic terrorist groups, including Hizballah and HAMAS, take advantage of loosely regulated territory and proximity to Muslim communities in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, and Foz do Iguacu, Brazil, to engage in illegal activity and illicit fundraising. Venezuela Venezuelan President Chavez has an ideological affinity with two Colombian terrorist organizations, the FARC and the National Liberation Army (ELN), which in turn limits Venezuelan cooperation with Colombia in combating terrorism. The FARC and ELN regard Venezuelan territory near the border as a safe haven and often use the area for cross-border incursions. In addition, splinter groups of the FARC and another designated terrorist organization, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), operate in various parts of Venezuela and are involved in drug trafficking. The Unity Coalition for Israel (http://www.israelunitycoalition.org) is "the largest worldwide coalition of Jewish and Christian organizations, with more than 200 groups representing millions of people dedicated to Israel. Though we have many different backgrounds, we have one common goal: A Safe and Secure Israel." "Israel is not just a Jewish issue. Millions of Christians resolutely endorse the principle of peace with security for the state of Israel. Because we work closely together and speak with a united voice, our message is being heard!" |
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ISRAEL-DEFENDING CHRISTIAN PROFESSOR SACKED BY DEPAUL UNIVERSITY
Posted by AFSI, June 8 2006. | |
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Friends, The following email arrived at AFSI and we are forwarding it as we received it. Professor Klocek deserves our support for standing up for Israel in a very hostile environment. Here is the email we received from "Between The Lines", http://www.scottishfriendsofisrael.org | |
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Allow me to remind you of an e-mail I received (March 30th) from Joy Wolfe in relation to a Roman Catholic Professor at DePaul University who spoke up for Israel and was sacked for doing so. She wrote:
"Muzzled by Muslims"
In academia today, "academic freedom" protects those who compare the 9/11 victims to Nazi higher ups, but it does not cover a professor with the temerity to challenge the beliefs of Muslim students in a single encounter which constituted, in the words of his boss, an "assault on their dignity." Thomas Klocek, a part-time adjunct professor at DePaul University, knows this first-hand; he was unlucky enough to fall on the wrong side of the political correctness fence. With no current income and facing the possibility of losing the health insurance he desperately needs for a serious kidney condition, he has decided to go public with his fight. Klocek considers his case a matter of academic freedom; the school insists it's a health issue. The Muslim students who had the 20-30 minute run-in with him that precipitated his suspension charge racism. Although every party involved frames the overall matter differently, multiple conversations with each side reveal that the facts are what are least in dispute. Here's what we do know. After 14 years of continuous employment at the Chicago-based college, Klocek was suspended with pay for the rest of the fall quarter last September, and then stayed suspended -- this time without pay -- through the winter quarter. Despite having, by all accounts, an unblemished record during that span, DePaul summarily dismissed him from his duties after the school learned that he had "insulted" and "demeaned" several Muslim students at a campus fair for extracurricular groups. After a handful of these students approached the dean just over a week after the incident and demanded that Klocek be canned, the school complied. Acting without a hearing -- as is required by the rules, except in an "emergency" -- Dean Susanne Dumbleton relieved Klocek of his teaching responsibilities for the quarter. DePaul spokesperson Denise Mattson characterized this parting of the ways as a "mutual decision," which makes it curious that Klocek sat out the winter quarter as well, this time without pay. Further undermining the "mutual" contention is that when asked if the dean considered suspending him an "emergency," thus obviating the requirement for a hearing, Mattson replied, "Yes." So what had Klocek done that made his dismissal so urgent that it was considered an "emergency" -- While one might expect a he said, she said scenario, both of the main parties involved largely agree on what transpired. On September 15, 2004, Klocek was strolling through the student activities fair at DePaul's downtown campus when he noticed a flyer showing Israeli tanks destroying Palestinian homes. "It was very one-sided," he explained, "and I wanted them to think about the bigger reality." He put on his professor hat and tried to do what teachers do: he tried to get them to think. And that's what has lead to his downfall. Approaching the Students for Justice in Palestine booth, Klocek engaged the students. And then he enraged them. Depending on who's telling the story, Klocek either earlier or later in the conversation said something to the effect of that while not all Muslims are terrorists, all the terrorists currently operating in the world today are Muslims. That's not an entirely true statement -- look at the Irish Republican Army for just one example -- but then again, he was quoting a fairly prominent Muslim, the head of the al-Arabiya satellite television network. And while you can quibble with the full accuracy of the claim, you can't deny its essence. Same goes for what the Muslim students consider his other truly offensive remark, that there is no Palestinian ethnicity and that the term really only became prominent in media coverage in the last 20 to 25 years. There has been in various forms a region -- though not a country, and certainly not an ethnically homogenous state -- known as "Palestine" going back to the Ottoman period, but "Palestinian" is more of a regional identification than an ethnic one. And while older than two decades, its usage only became common in the 20th century. Eight days later, some of the students involved met with the dean and cried racism. They asked for his head. They got it. The school adamantly maintains that it's about the behavior -- even Klocek admits he raised his voice, though not to the point of yelling -- and claims that it indicates his health problems are hindering his performance, particularly his judgment. When asked to name any other questionable behavior by Klocek, though, Mattson hid behind medical privacy -- which has nothing to do with disclosing his classroom actions that also supposedly contributed to the decision to suspend him. The logic is certainly interesting. He stated beliefs clearly outside the acceptable mainstream in academia, therefore he must be nuts. Thus, they're not punishing him for the content of his remarks, but the fact that he was crazy enough to utter them. It also appears that the school's stated rationale is not based on an accurate accounting of what actually happened. DePaul's spokesperson had said that Klocek cursed at the students. Salma Nassar, SJP president and the student who did most of the talking during the incident, says he didn't. Mattson also said that Klocek had flipped the students the bird. Nassar, again, says otherwise. She says that Klocek bit his thumb -- which could be taken as an insult by Arabs, but which has its roots in Shakepeare ("I bite my thumb at thee"). The professor, for his part, adds that he merely flicked his thumb from under his chin, an old, non-profane Italian gesture expressing frustration. And on what was stressed as the core of the contention that Klocek was unfit to teach -- that the students felt scared and intimidated -- the school seems to have gotten that wrong, too. When pressed about whether or not she or the others felt "scared" or "threatened," Nassar said no. She explained that they were "a little bit intimidated." But what student has ever gone an entire college career without once feeling "a little bit intimidated" by a professor? Which brings us back to the content of Klocek's comments. The students, in both remarks in the school newspaper and in a mass e-mail, were clearly most concerned by what they perceived as the professor's ignorance and racism. Dean Dumbleton, in a letter to the school newspaper seemed mostly motivated by such complaints, writing that Klocek had "demean[ed] the ideas" and "freedom" of the Muslim students and "dishonored" their "perspective" by "press[ing] erroneous assertions." Showing that the charge of racism is the ultimate kryptonite on college campuses, the dean delved into flagrant hand-wringing: "I sincerely regret the assault on their dignity, their beliefs, their individual selves, and I continue to be saddened by the fact that they have experienced such pain at the hands of someone taught at my school, which has defined commitment to social justice as one of its core values." Blame the Muslim civil rights groups, particularly the Council on American-Islamic Relations, for conflating in the public mind legitimate political discourse with bigotry. Or blame academia for a culture so twisted that Colorado University's president would rather resign than fire Ward Churchill, the infamous professor who called 9/11 victims "little Eichmanns." Dean Dumbleton is probably guilty on both counts. And if her idea of academic freedom is to summarily suspend a 14-year veteran for politically incorrect remarks, then maybe she should follow the lead of CU's president. Joel Mowbray is author of Dangerous Diplomacy: How the State
Department Threatens America's Security.
Americans For a Safe Israel/AFSI is a pro-active pro-Israel
advocacy group. AFSI may be contacted by mail at 1623 Third Ave.,
Suite 205, New York, N.Y. 10128 (Tel: 212-828-2424; Fax:
212-828-1717); by email at afsi@rcn.com; or by accessing its website:
www.afsi.org. Barry Freedman is Executive Director.
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TOM FRIEDMAN VERSUS AMY GOODMAN
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 8, 2006. |
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I'm not exactly a fan of Tom Friedman. Some things he gets it right, and some things he gets it the way it looks to me like his Saudi contacts want him to get it (no proof...just my impression based upon his many errors of fact regarding what he calls the Israelli "settlers"). However, in this interview with Amy Goodman, he confronts her politely but effectively on every one of her inane, erroneous, and sometimes outright ludicrous assertions about the Iraq war and Arafat and Israel and Moslem terrorism. I suspect that she was sorry that she invited him to be interviewed. The interview was Wednesday, June 7th, 2006 and is entitled
"Petropolitics, Iraq, Israel-Palestine and the "Excuse Makers". It is
archived at |
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AMY GOODMAN: We speak with Thomas Friedman, the Foreign Affairs columnist for the New York Times. A three-time Pulitzer prize winner, Thomas Friedman is one of this country's most-widely read political commentators. His books include the award-winning From Beirut to Jerusalem and The Lexus and the Olive Tree. His latest book is The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century. Later this month, he will host "Addicted To Oil: Thomas Friedman Reporting", a television special on the politics of this country's reliance on oil, or what he calls "petropolitics." "Addicted To Oil" airs on the Discovery Channel on June 24. RUSH TRANSCRIPT AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the film, Thomas Friedman? THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Thanks for having me. The basic thrust of the film is that this is not your parents' energy crisis. Now we¹re in a totally new world, for four basic reasons. The first is that we're in a War on Terrorism today in which we're funding both sides in the war with our energy purchases. We fund the U.S. Army, Navy and Marine Corps with our tax dollars, we fund Al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, the regimes that support them, and the charities that support them indirectly, with our energy purchases. So we're funding both sides in the War on Terrorism, and that¹s flat out nuts. Second, the world is flat, I believe, and three billion new consumers just walked on to the playing field from India, China, Brazil, the Soviet Union, all with their own version of the American dream: a house, a car, a toaster, a microwave and a refrigerator. If we don't find an alternative way to satisfy their energy needs and demands, we're going to see this planet burned up, choked up, and smoked up so much faster than people realize. And that leads to the third reason this is not your parents' energy crisis, which is green technology, clean power. This is going to be the growth industry of the 21st century to satisfy all of these new consumers. And we want America to be a dominant player in that industry. The way we get America to be a dominant player in that clean power industry is not by telling our automakers, our industrialists, "Oh, don't toughen up your standards on energy and fuel efficiency, we don't want you to do anything hard." That's precisely what will lead to China, Japan and Europe taking the lead in that industry. Number four of the reasons this is not your parents energy crisis is that we thought the fall of the Berlin Wall was going to be unleashing an unstoppable tide of free markets and free people, and for about 10 years it did just that. But basically, that 10 years was coincident with oil at $20 to $40 a barrel. As oil moved to $40 to $70 a barrel of oil, we've seen the tide of free markets and free people unleashed by the fall of the Berlin Wall, meeting a counter-tide of what I would call petro-authoritarianism. These are authoritarian regimes, some of them elected authoritarians, like in Venezuela, who are using their huge oil windfalls to ensconce their authoritarianism and power. So what are we seeing in the world today? The wave of free markets and free people that was unleashed by the fall of the Berlin Wall is now meeting a counter-wave of petro-authoritarianism, by petrol estates called Russia, Iran, Sudan, Venezuela, Kazakhstan, Equatorial Guinea, you can do gown the list. And they're creating a very poisonous geo-politics. AMY GOODMAN: Thomas Friedman, on the subject of oil I wanted to ask you about Iraq. I'm sure many of your critics will be happy to hear you continuing to speak out about this country's reliance on oil. But you've also been a vocal supporter of the war in Iraq, and many critics argue that the Bush administration wouldn't have taken this country to war if Iraq's main export was olive oil, not crude. How does your support for easing off our reliance on oil reconcile with your support for the war in Iraq? THOMAS FRIEDMAN: If you read -- watch my documentary or read everything I've said, I've been calling for this kind of oil policy ever since 9/11. And I believe it's the only way to advance the cause or it's one of the only ways to advance the cause of freedom in that part of the world. As you know, if you've been reading me on Iraq, my position on the war had nothing to do with WMD. My position on the war had to do with the fact that we've got a part of the world over there that is basically entrenched in a whole set of pathologies, pathologies that produce the kind of characters that produce 9/11, who I think in the long term pose a real fundamental threat to open societies all over the world, including ours. And the only way to get at those pathologies is by trying to produce a different context in that part of the world. That was my argument in favor of the war. To me, it was to try to partner with people there to produce a different politics. And I believed going back to before the war, going back to 9/11, part of that policy has to be a different energy politics in our country as well. AMY GOODMAN: As you say, you didn't argue that this was to get rid of weapons of mass destruction. You said it was to spread democracy. In November of 2003 you wrote, "this war is the most important liberal revolutionary U.S. democracy-building project since the Marshall Plan. We got off to an unnecessarily bad start but it's one of the noblest things this country has ever attempted abroad, and it's a moral and strategic imperative that we give it our best shot." Those were your words. THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Right. AMY GOODMAN: Critics of the position say if the U.S. came to Iraq to build democracy, then it wouldn't have vigorously resisted Iraqi calls for direct elections. Now, as you'll recall in January 2004, 100,000 Iraqis took to the streets chanting "yes to elections, no to selections." Elections were finally held in January of 2005 after the Bush administration fought to delay them. The Bush administration has also ignored overwhelming Iraqi public opinion in favor of a timetable for troop withdrawal, I think it's 70% according to a Zogby poll this past January. How do you respond to that? THOMAS FRIEDMAN: It's a very good and legitimate question, and if you've been reading me on the war from the very beginning, I've been a critic of how we have prosecuted this. You know, it's possible to do a good thing really, really badly. The very first column I wrote from Iraq, and I've been there five times, was called "Hold Your Applause." Because I could see, a, we didn't have enough troops there. And b, I've been an advocate of elections from very early on, and turning authority over to Iraqis as fast as we could. We did many, many stupid things there. We may have done so many stupid things that now we've dug ourselves in a hole we can't get out of. I hope not, because at the end of the day elections were held, eight million Iraqis did turn out. Now, Iraq is going to be what Iraqis make of it, and I would also point you to the fact that if we lose in Iraq, I wish we could say we were losing to the Vietcong, traditional Iraqi nationalists. But we're not, we're losing to Islamo-fascists, we're losing to sectarian fanatics, we're losing to criminal gangs, and we're losing in part as you say because we never established a secure context from the very beginning. I've been focused from the very beginning on trying to do this right so we had a chance for those democrats to emerge. AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you about Israel and the Palestinians. Certainly you've covered this issue for a very long time. Since the outbreak of the second intifada in the fall of 2000, you've laid most of the blame for the breakdown of the peace process on the Palestinians. You said the Palestinian leadership has chosen violence instead of accepting the generous Israeli peace offer at Camp David in July 2000 and the months after. But Palestinians have long maintained that Israel has never offered them anything beyond a Bantu stand state carved up by the large Israeli settlement blocks. In fact, on Democracy Now!, we had the former Israeli Foreign Minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami, and he said that if he were a Palestinian, he would have rejected the offer his government offered Arafat at Camp David. Your response to this, and what do you say to Palestinians who say they can't accept a peace deal that would leave tens of thousands of settlers deep in their territory? THOMAS FRIEDMAN: A very legitimate question. Again, if you read my columns on this all the way through, the argument I basically had been making was this: I understood why Yasser Arafat did not accept the Camp David offer, because my position, which has always been for a two-state solution along the 67 lines. I understood why Palestinians would say it's very nice of you, Mr. Barak, to offer us 90%, but we believe we're entitled to 100%. That's what Sadat got. That's what we believe we're entitled to. I totally get that. That is absolutely a defensible position. But here's what's indefensible: what¹s indefensible is in response to a 90% offer instead of 100% offer you go on a rampage of suicide bombing and intifada rather than saying, to Barak, Arafat could have said to Barak, "You know Mr. Barak, that offer, it's part the way there. I'm glad to see you've moved from 50% to 90% but you're still short. But here's what I want to do: I want to go around and convince every Israeli why it's in their fundamental interest, now that you've gone to 90, to go from 90 to 100. I want to make that argument directly to the Israeli people." That is not what Yasser Arafat, what he launched instead was a violent intifada. That is what I found inexcusable. AMY GOODMAN: I thought what Yasser Arafat said was he wanted U.N. 242, complete withdrawal. THOMAS FRIEDMAN: What Yasser Arafat did was launch an intifada. AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you about a comment you made in April 1988 in an interview with the Israeli press. You were talking about what Israel should do with the Occupied Territories. And you said Israel should hand over control to a client Palestinian proxy force. You explain this by saying, "I believe that as soon as Ahmed has a seat on the bus, he will limit his demand." MIT professor Noam Chomsky later reprinted the statement in his articles and books, calling your comments racist. How do you respond? THOMAS FRIEDMAN: I have no -- if I have said that in 1988, 20 years ago, I would have absolutely no recollection of saying that or what the context was. But if he said I said that, then I said that. I've said a million things differently since. And if you want to go back and check every quote Noam Chomsky has made over the last 30 years and pluck out one from 1988 and throw it in his face, go ahead. AMY GOODMAN: So you're saying you're sorry you said that? THOMAS FRIEDMAN: My hundred thousand words since then have been very, very clear. Before then and after then I have no idea what the context is you're talking about. 100,000 words since then have been very clear. I'm for a two-state solution. AMY GOODMAN: Last July you wrote a controversial column calling on the state department to monitor and publicly identify excuse makers and hate mongers. THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Yes. AMY GOODMAN: You wrote, "After every major terrorist incident the excuse makers come out to tell us why imperialism, Zionism, colonialism or Iraq explains why the terrorists acted. These excuse makers are just one notch less despicable than the terrorists and also deserve to be exposed. Every quarter the State Department should identify the top 10 hate mongers, excuse makers and truth tellers in the world." That's your quote. THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Absolutely. I believe that. AMY GOODMAN: To make an enemy's list, the state department -- THOMAS FRIEDMAN: People who make excuses for terrorism should be exposed and identified. I also use my own pen to expose and identify people in Israel who explore hate mongering as well toward Palestinians, among the settlers. I've been probably one of their biggest critics and enemies in The New York Times referring to them as fanatics and lunatics. AMY GOODMAN: For people who say we have to understand why others in the world are angry, do you think they belong on the State Department list? THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Understanding why people are angry and understanding why people tell you that 9/11 happened, and no Jews were in the twin towers at that time because they were all warned ahead of time. So, let's be clear about what I was saying. I was very focused on people who want to justify the murder of innocent women and children, innocent civilians, and I very much believed then and I very much believe now that they should be exposed. I think Jewish hate mongers should be exposed as well as I believe I made clear in that column, too. AMY GOODMAN: Are you concerned today in this country about people who are fiercely critical of the war in Iraq, the occupation, being called unpatriotic, being called hate mongers, being put on government lists? THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Amy, if you read my column, one of the biggest critics of the war is the woman I live with, and I've probably mentioned -- I don't know how many times, in my column -- my wife's criticism of the war. I believe it's honorable. I believe it's a perfectly moral position. I would be disgusted by anyone calling them traitors. AMY GOODMAN: And why do you trust the State Department to make the determination on who they would call terrorists for being critical of the invasion? THOMAS FRIEDMAN: We clearly know what hate speech is and we know what legitimate opposition is. I know the difference. AMY GOODMAN: And do you think the State Department knows the difference? The Bush administration, President Bush? THOMAS FRIEDMAN: I think they could. I know the difference between hate speech and people who oppose a policy on legitimate grounds, and opposing the Iraq war is not hate speech, I'm sorry. Basically justifying the bombing of the World Trade Center is hate speech. I know the difference. If you don't, that's your problem. AMY GOODMAN: Do you think the State Department does? THOMAS FRIEDMAN: I'm not going get into this silliness. AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you for being with us, Thomas Friedman. Three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, New York Times columnist. David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com |
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AL-QAEDA TERRORIST IN IRAQ KILLED IN TARGETED AIR STRIKE
Posted by Hillel Fendel, June 8, 2006. |
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Editor's Note: Read al-Zarqawi's biography by clicking here. |
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The leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has been killed in a U.S. air strike in Iraq. No lull in terrorism in Iraq -- or the Palestinian Authority -- is expected, however. The United States had been pursuing Zarqawi for several years, saying he was known to be responsible for the deaths of thousands of Iraqis. Zarqawi and one of his key lieutenants, Sheikh Abdel Rahman, were killed late Wednesday afternoon in an air strike "against an identified, isolated safe house," said George W. Casey, the top U.S. military officer in Iraq. "Tips and intelligence from Iraqi senior leaders from his network led forces to al-Zarqawi and some of his associates who were conducting a meeting" in the area. He said that though the killing was a significant blow to Al-Qaeda, it was unlikely to stem violence in Iraq. U.S. President George W. Bush echoed this prediction. Reports of Al-Qaeda terrorist cells in Judea, Samaria, Gaza and the Sinai are becoming increasingly prevalent. Just this week, Israel's General Security Service chief Yuval Diskin told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that Al Qaeda has been taking root in PA strongholds in these areas, and were heavily involved in intensifying weapons smuggling into Gaza. "Zarqawi and Al-Qaeda in Iraq have conducted terrorist activities against the Iraqi people for years," Casey said, "in attempts to undermine the Iraqi national government and coalition efforts to rebuild and stabilize Iraq." Zarqawi was notorious for his massive car bomb attacks. In February 2005, for instance, no fewer than 125 people were killed when a car bomb he organized blew up in the midst of a large group of policemen in southern Iraq. In September 2004, 35 children and 7 adults were killed in a series of attacks he organized in Baghdad. Another 47 were killed around the same time in a car bomb attack outside the city. In December of that year, two simultaneous car bombs killed 60 people. Zarqawi was also responsible for the attacks in three luxury hotels in Amman, Jordan last year, and he is considered to be responsible for the murderous attacks in the Sinai Desert as well. Hillel Fendel is Senior News Editor for Israel National News. This news item appeared today in Arutz-Sheva (www.IsraelNN.com). |
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HUNGER OR NO, 111 TRUCKLOADS OF TVS TO PA-LAND
Posted by Hillel Fendel, June 8, 2006. |
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While the Hamas/Palestinian Authority continues to claim hunger and impoverishment because of the world's financial boycott, 111 truckloads of TV sets have entered Gaza over the past two weeks. The televisions, imported by Israelis and resold to PA importers for sale to end users, were shipped through the Karni Crossing. The upswing in television purchases in the PA may be related to the start of the World Cup soccer games in Europe, broadcast throughout the Middle East. The price in Israel to watch the World Cup is some 300 shekels. Lt.-Col. Shlomo Dror, speaking with Arutz-7's correspondent Haggai Huberman, confirmed the report, and said that 400 trucks enter every day with food and medicines. Foreign Minister Tzippy Livni yesterday told American envoy David Walsh that the Hamas-led PA government refused Israel's offer of 50 million shekels worth of medicines, instead demanding that Israel provide the cash equivalent from the tax revenues Israel began withholding since the Hamas took over the PA. Israel's decision is to use the money for humanitarian purposes, and not to transfer money that is likely to be used to fund attacks against Israelis. Several weeks ago, Israel turned to the PA, via the World Health Organization (WHO), in an attempt to find out which hospitals they should provide with medical equipment and medicines. WHO officials came back with an answer a few days ago, saying that the PA is not interested in receiving medicines, but rather cash. "The PA's position shows that there really is no health crisis in the PA, contrary to its claims," Israeli security sources said, "and that they want to use the money for other things." The European Union is attempting to expand the definition of "humanitarian needs" to include all welfare and social services, such as education, social workers and psychologists. Many in Israel, on the other hand, feel that whatever money is given for these purposes will simply free up other PA monies to be used for terrorism and related causes. Hillel Fendel is Senior News Editor for Israel National News. This news item appeared today in Arutz-Sheva (www.IsraelNN.com). |
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ISRAEL OFFERS MEDICINES, PA DEMANDS CASH
Posted by Bryna Berch, June 8, 2006. |
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This is obscene. It's not obscene that the PA refuses medicine but wants the cash. They're acting like any alcoholic street person that wants the cash, not a meal ticket. What's obscene is that the Israeli Government is not taking care of the Gush Katif people who were thrown out of their homes and orchards. Olmert is not taking care of the 25% of Israeli children who are below the poverty level. But he is frantically trying to obey his State Dept masters to give the Arabs goods and money, while putting up a front that he won't deal with Hamas. Isn't that what Israel said about the PLO? And El-Fatah? Different names. Different faces. But all these arabs have the same goal -- to kill off Israel. This news item was written by Ronny Sofer and appeared in Ynet (/www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3260173,00.html) |
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Foreign minister meets with US assistant secretary of state, tells him Israel sought to aid Palestinians with medications worth NIS 50 million but was turned down Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Wednesday updated US Assistant Secretary of State David Welch that the Palestinians refused to receive aid in medications from Israel. Livni told Welch that Israel sought to transfer to the Palestinian Authority medications worth NIS 50 million (about USD 11 million), but the Palestinians asked that the sum be delivered in cash from their tax money. Israeli defense officials said that "the Palestinians' stance reveals that there is no real health crisis in the PA and that they are trying to use the money for other needs." The affair was exposed by Channel 10. According to the report, the World Health Organization (WHO) failed to convince the Palestinians to receive the medications from Israel. State officials said Wednesday evening that 34 trucks loaded with medications have entered the Gaza Strip in recent days. The Israel Defense Forces also enabled the delivery of 119 additional donations through shipping containers loaded with medications expected to enter the Strip in the near future. 'Palestinians not interested' Several weeks ago, Israel turned to the Palestinians through the WHO in a bid to clarify which hospitals were in need of medical equipment and medications in order to purchase them with the money in its possession. The decision to purchase the medications and not give the Palestinians money was made by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who sought to address the PA's humanitarian problems, but to prevent the transfer of funds to the Hamas-led government which will use them as it pleases. WHO representatives recently got back to Israel, saying that the Palestinians were not interested in receiving the medications. According to the representatives, the Palestinians are interested in cash for their own needs. On Wednesday Israel raised it before the US assistant secretary of state, and the argument remains unresolved. |
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WORLD HAILS AL-ZARQAWI'S DEATH. HOW WOULD IT REACT TO THE DEATH OF
A HAMAS LEADER?
Posted by The Reality Show, June 8, 2006. |
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World hails al-Zarqawi's death, good, love it, How would the world react to a Hamas leader's death? KurdishMedia World hails al-Zarqawi's death Al Qaeda chief Zarqawi killed in Iraq -- ABC Online Abu Musab
Scotsman World reacts to al-Zarqawi death -- CNN -- 53 minutes ago
Good, question is how the world reacts to killing a "palestinian" Hamas leader, and why the double standard? Sheik Yassin or Rantisi anyone? Contact The Reality Show by email at therealityshow@mail.com or go to the website: http://lightonthings.blogspot.com/ |
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THE SINKING OF THE COLE
Posted by Steven Plaut, June 8, 2006. |
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This article was written by Liel Leibovitz -- Staff Writer at The
Jewish Week
Please note how donors to the university were recruited to battle political bias within that university. This is an important lesson that all donors to Israeli universities must learn! Please pass the word! |
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Middle East Wars Flare Up At Yale "Controversial academic shot down for appointment; was campaign against him politically motivated" Juan Cole, one of the country's top Middle East scholars, was poised for the biggest step of his career. A tenured professor at the University of Michigan, Cole was tapped earlier this year by a Yale University search committee to teach about the modern Middle East. In two separate votes in May, Cole was approved by both the sociology and history departments, the latter the university's largest. The only remaining hurdle was the senior appointments committee, also known as the tenure committee, a group consisting of about a half-dozen professors from various disciplines across the university. Last week, however, in what is shaping up as the latest in a series of heated battles over the political affiliations of Middle Eastern studies professors, the tenure committee voted down Cole's nomination. Several Yale faculty members described the decision to overrule the votes of the individual departments as "highly unusual." The reasons behind the rejection remain unknown; several calls to a Yale spokeswoman went unreturned. But university insiders say that the uncharacteristic rebuff may have been influenced by several factors, central among them the political commentary Cole writes on his blog, "Informed Comment". They also contend that Cole's nomination was torpedoed mainly by senior professors in both departments who were concerned with Cole's controversial persona. Often favoring a pugilistic tone and consistently criticizing Israel's policies in the West Bank, Cole has attracted a visibility that has made him a favorite target of several conservative commentators. When Cole's potential hiring became publicly known, several of his detractors, including the American Enterprise Institute's Michael Rubin and Washington Times columnist Joel Mowbray, took various steps to protest the decision. They wrote op-ed pieces in various publications and Mowbray went as far as to send a letter to a dozen of Yale's major donors, many of whom are Jewish, urging them to call the university and protest Cole's hiring. Cole, while refusing to comment on the tenure committee's vote, told The Jewish Week he believes that "the concerted press campaign by neoconservatives against me, which was a form of lobbying the higher administration, was inappropriate and a threat to academic integrity. "The articles published in the Yale Standard, the New York Sun, the Wall Street Journal, Slate, and the Washington Times, as part of what was clearly an orchestrated campaign, contained made-up quotes, inaccuracies, and false charges," he said. "The idea that I am any sort of anti-Jewish racist because I think Israel would be better off without the occupied territories is bizarre, but I fear that a falsehood repeated often enough and in high enough places may begin to lose its air of absurdity." "The issue is complicated," according to one Jewish official at the University of Michigan who asked not to be named, "because Cole is seen as a scholar who does not intimidate students in class with his Mideast views, but has an appalling Web site, highly critical of Israel. So what are the boundaries of outside behavior affecting academic decisions?" Opponents Go On The Offensive Cole's saga with Yale began earlier this year when a search committee was formed to find a Middle Eastern studies professor to teach at the Yale Center for International and Areas Studies, a joint position of the history and sociology departments. Political science professor Frances Rosenbluth, who was part of the search committee, said that Cole emerged as a clear choice. "The committee read his work very thoroughly, in conjunction with the work of other scholars," Rosenbluth told The Jewish Week. "We interviewed other people, we sent out letters to the field of contemporary Middle Eastern studies, and [Cole] is very highly regarded as a scholar. That's why the committee made its recommendation." But before Cole was even named as a candidate, some opponents took to the op-ed pages of various newspapers to press their case. Writing in the Yale Daily News on April 18, Rubin, a neoconservative who often writes about the need for a strong U.S. policy against Iran, accused Cole of having "abandoned scholarship in favor of blog commentary." The same day, Eliana Johnson, a Yale undergraduate, and Mitchell Webber, a Yale graduate who is now a law student and a research assistant for Alan Dershowitz at Harvard Law School, published an op-ed in the conservative New York Sun. Echoing many of Rubin's points, Johnson and Webber referred to Cole as the "professor best known for disparaging the participation of prominent American Jews in government." Those op-eds had little to say about Cole's academic background, focusing most of their criticism on what the Michigan professor had written on his blog. Both pieces appeared to blur the distinction between American Jews and some Bush administration officials. On Aug. 29, 2004, for example, Cole wrote a blog entry calling several Bush neoconservatives "pro-Likud intellectuals" who wish "to use the Pentagon as Israel's Gurkha regiment, fighting elective wars on behalf of Tel Aviv." Referring to the entry in his op-ed for the Yale Daily News, Rubin contends that Cole "accuses Jewish Americans of using the Pentagon as Israel's Gurkha regiment." Similarly, Webber and Johnson claim that "according to Mr. Cole, American Jews both inside and out of government are primarily loyal to Israel and subvert American interests for those of the Jewish State." "These articles," said Cole, "attempted to make my critiques of the Likud, on both sides of the Atlantic, look like an attack on American Jewry in general, which is manifestly not the case. For these people, Likud equals Israel equals Jews, so all criticism of revisionist Zionism and Greater Israel expansionism is anti-Semitic." Despite the op-ed pieces, Cole's nomination was brought to the history and sociology departments, both of which voted in late May, to approve Cole's hiring. The history department, according to several sources in the faculty, approved Cole with 13 members supporting the appointment, seven opposing it and three abstaining. The approval gave rise to a renewed wave of activity. Writing in the conservative Washington Times on May 22, columnist Joel Mowbray wrote a sharp critique of Cole, attacking the professor's tendency to label those who disagree with him as Likudniks, Zionists or neocons. Letter To Donors Then Mowbray went a step further. He drafted a letter, which he forwarded to a dozen of Yale's prominent donors, most of whom are Jewish, urging them to make their disapproval of Cole's hiring known. "Yale is poised to hire and award tenure to a professor who doubts that the 9-11 attacks had any connection to fundamentalist Islam, blames Israel for causing terror attacks against the U.S. and contends that Iran's nuclear ambitions are only a threat in the minds of American "neocons" and their Tel Aviv counterparts," reads the letter, a copy of which Mowbray sent to The Jewish Week. "A large measure of the university's reputation is based on the respect of its scholars and the authority of their published work. So who is this 'scholar' that Yale so desperately wants to hire?" The letter goes on to address Cole's "non-scholarly temperament" (citing one particularly profane entry from Cole's blog), as well as his "predilection for name-calling over honest debate." Last week, as Cole's hiring was being discussed by the tenure committee, the letter's recipients apparently weighed in, according to sources. Several faculty members said they had heard that at least four major Jewish donors, whose identity the faculty members did not know, have contacted officials at the university urging that Cole's appointment be denied. And while most faculty members contacted for this piece agree that it is highly improbable that outside pressure played a part in the tenure committee's decision, the letters and the subsequent calls suggest a campaign to discredit Cole. The major opposition to Cole, most faculty members interviewed for this story agree, came from within the departments themselves. At least two faculty members said they had witnessed senior professors at both departments attempt to influence their peers to vote against Cole. One university insider familiar with the case said that there may be several reasons why the tenure committee shot down Cole's appointment. First, according to the source, most of Cole's scholarship pertains to the Baha'i faith and is limited to the 18th and 19th centuries, a liability for a professor charged with teaching about the contemporary Middle East. Second, the source continued, Cole appears to lack in collegiality, as his penchant for combative blog entries and personal spats with detractors might make him an unnerving fixture on Yale. Finally, Cole's politics may have played a role, though a less important one than the other two factors, said the source. Whatever the reasons, Cole will not be relocating from Michigan to Connecticut, and the campaigns, both internal and external, over the nature of Middle Eastern studies in campuses across the country seem unlikely to abate. SP: As an afterword, it should be noted that one of Cole's most scurrilous articles, one that no doubt helped get him turned down for this gig, was a piece attacking me as a "Kahanist" because I had stated that denying Kahanists free speech rights is selective suppression of freedom of speech (while never endorsing Kahanists themselves). Cole also accused me of leading a Zionist campaign to "stir up racial conflict" when I noted that the Sudanese Islamofascists who were murdering black Africans without Cole having much to say against it! The articles that helped sink the Cole:
Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist,
a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author
of "The Scout." He frequently comments -- both seriously and
satirically -- on Israeli politics and the left wing academic
community. His website address is
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UNITED IN DESTRUCTION OF ISRAEL
Posted by Fern Sidman, June 8, 2006. |
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It has now been almost a year since the government of Israel uprooted and dispersed 10,000 of it's citizens from their homes in Gush Katif. It has now been almost a year since Jewish homes, synagogues and yeshivas were demolished were in Gush Katif. And as we know, many former Gush Katif residents are now homeless and are struggling with dire poverty. In the first half of the year 2005, we were told by the Sharon-Olmert government that this evacuation and demolition of Gush Katif would bring about "peace" with the "Palestinians" as they would now be on the trajectory toward independent statehood. We were told that this gesture of territorial compromise would be welcomed by the Arabs and would expedite the "Roadmap to Peace" that the Bush administration touted as the last great hope in the protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As we witness the families of Gush Katif who have suffered severe psycholgical trauma, homelessness and daily destitution, we ask ourselves if this disengagement plan achieved it's desired results. We ask ourselves whether the relinquishing of G-d given Jewish land to our Arab enemies has brought about the "peace' that we sacrificed life and limb for. It was recently reported by Arutz Sheva that Yuval Diskin, head of Israel's domestic intelligence agency, also known as the Shin Bet, told a Knesset committee that since the disengagement, "weapons smuggling into Gaza has reached unprecedented proportions." He also added that, "Arab terrorists have succeeded in smuggling 11 tons of TNT into Gaza", as well as, 'smuggling massive quantities of other weapons across the Egypt-Gaza border." Among the new weapons at the terrorists' disposal were 10,000 rifles, 1600 pistols, RPGs, Katyushas, and shoulder-fired Strella missiles which are capable of downing civilian aircraft. As new weapons and other armaments flow into the PA, Diskin said, groups such as Al Qaeda, which promote World Jihad, have been taking root in PA strongholds in Gaza and Judea and Samaria. In fact, Diskin told the committee, elements of the World Jihad in Sinai were responsible for intensifying the extent of weapons smuggling into Gaza. Egypt, he explained, was likewise ineffective in its efforts to curtail Al Qaeda, which has opened up a number of cells in the Sinai Peninsula. Overall, Diskin said, the Egyptians had a poor record in fighting terrorism. These facts come as no surprise as Kassam rockets are fired on Jewish settlements on a daily basis from Gaza. These facts come as no surprise as we know that Arab terrorist bases now stand in the same place as the former Jewish settlement of Neve Dekalim in Gush Katif.. Whoever has eyes to see and ears that hear, knows that the "peace" that had been hoped for has never come to fruition and never will. Over the last year, in the aftermath of this painful and agonizing disengagement, the world saw the election of Hamas, as the sole representative of the Palestinian people. We know that this disengagement has only emboldened our enemies. It is also very clear, that our Arab enemies view any form of territorial compromise on the part of Israel as a sign of weakness and guilt and they respond to this gesture towards "peace" with even more contempt and hatred than before. Subsequent to the disengagement from Gush Katif we watched the Arabs in Gaza and all over Israel celebrate with overwhelming joy and glee as Jews were being forcibly evacuated from their homes. We watched as Arabs burned down Jewish synagogues and other abandoned buildings. We watched ourselves being humiliated by our enemies. And to those who proclaimed that this disengagement would bring about the "peace" that they so desperately want, that they want now, we must let them know that there is no "peace' and their continued efforts to attain "peace" even in light of the fact that Hamas swears the destruction of Israel, are guilty of working hand in hand with the Arab terrorist enemy. Yes, it is quite true that their is no significant difference between Peace Now, Hamas and Al Qaeda. They all have one common denominator that binds them together and that is the destruction of the State of Israel. It is true that those who swell the ranks of Peace Now are mainly Jewish leftists and those in Hamas and Al Qaeda are Arabs of Muslim and Christian descent, but other than that fact there are more similarities than differences. It was recently reported that Peace Now has gone to the Supreme Court of Israel demanding that six outposts in Yesha be immediately evacuated and demolished as the organization claims that the demolition orders are about to expire at the end of the month. As we know, Peace Now has fought a no-holds-barred war against the Jewish presence in Judea, Samaria and Gaza for over 25 years. The Supreme Court rejected Peace Now's demand and ruled that the suit is basically irrelevant, as Defense Minister Amir Peretz recently signed a document extending the validity of the demolition orders. The Court essentially accepted the State's request to be allowed to formulate its policies on the issue according to its own timetable and security considerations. The six outposts in question are Givat Assaf, Givat HaRoeh, Ramat Gilad, Mitzpeh Yitzhar, Mitzpeh Lachish and Maaleh Rehavam. We must send a bold and clear message to our enemies from within and without that we know that you are united in your goal to seek the annihilation of the State of Israel. We know that you are both kindred spirits in your quest to vanquish the Jewish presence from the land of Israel. We know that you are both aided in your goal by the morally and spiritually bankrupt leaders of Israel. We must also let you know, that as long as we have mouths to speak and feet to march with, we will never desist in speaking the truth and we will never desist from opposing your insidious efforts to destroy the Jewish nation. We must make you aware that you can never destroy the Jewish nation, because as we say in our daily prayers, the Almighty G-d of Israel is our "King, Helper, Savior and Shield". Our faith in G-d will never be diminshed. To quote the words of the sweet singer of Israel, Dovid HaMelech, "I will not fear the myriads of people that have set themsleves around me. Arise, Hashem, deliver me my G-d, for you have smitten all of my enemies, upon the jawbone, the teeth of the wicked, You have broken. To Hashem belongs deliverance, upon Your people is Your blessing." (Psalms, chapter 3) May these words penetrate our hearts and minds and may Hashem give us the strength, power and wisdom to defend the Jewish nation against those within and without who seek our destruction. Contact Fern Sidman by email at AriellaH@aol.com |
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NONE ... ZILCH ...NADA
Posted by Gerald A. Honigman, June 8, 2006. |
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Let me start by first issuing an apology to those readers who are versed in much of what comes next. The problem is that the other side keeps on resurrecting the same old arguments, and newcomers to the issues--or even oldtimers who pretend otherwise--thus have to be handed my same responses. A lie left unanswered often does eventually become accepted as truth. So, here we go... The latest hot story coming out of the power struggle (largely for control of the millions of dollars in foreign aid at stake... Arafat became a millionaire many times over this way) between the good cop and bad cop halves of the sweet talking Arafatian and more honest Hamasnik same coin is that the West's darling, Mahmoud Abbas, is pressuring the democratically-elected Hamas-led government of the Palestinian Arabs to accept a plan forged by jailed murderers of Jews and wannabes to create the Arabs' 22nd state and second one in "Palestine" (Jordan was created from almost 80% of the original 1920 territory) in the West Bank and Gaza. (And talk about a run-on sentence!) Abbas says to an all-too-believing and gullible West that he wants this state to be set up "just" on every inch of territory in Judea and Samaria (known by those names far longer than the "West Bank"), not allowing for any modification to Israel's 1949, U.N.-imposed armistice lines... lines which made the sole, miniscule Jewish State a mere 9-miles wide in spots, and roughly only double that width in its strategic waist, where most of its population and industry are located. Of course the West doesn't get to hear what Abbas then tells his own folks in Arabic. It's useful to recall how those Auschwitz lines Abbas refers to came to be. Having rejected the 1947 partition plan for the remaining 20% of the Mandate left after Arabs already received the bulk of "Palestine" in 1922 with the creation of Transjordan, a half dozen Arab states--armed to the teeth with weapons left over by the Allies in World War II and even led, in Transjordan, by British officers--then attacked a reborn Israel in 1948. This attack and rejection of the partition (at the same time that a predominantly Hindu India and a Muslim Pakistan were being created for similar reasons) created a refugee problem that the whole world has become quite familiar with... that of Arab refugees. As part of this new jail-created "peace (of the grave) plan," Abbas also expects Israel to grant the right of return to said Arab refugees... whether it's accepted by them or not. Keep in mind that these folks have been raised since birth on Jew-hatred and jihadist ideologies. Also keep in mind that Abbas--the moderate--openly ran on a platform promising Israel's total destruction as a Jewish state--but by "more acceptable" means. Babies and mothers getting blown apart in pizzerias hurt the Arab cause, as do students disemboweled on exploding buses. So... force the Jews to be swamped by "returning" Arabs with one of the highest birth rates in the world. Abbas swears he will not back down from this demand...despite attempts by his supporters among the Foggy Folks and elsewhere to paint a more rosy picture about this. Arafat loved to say that the Arab mother was his best weapon. His buddy, Abbas, agrees. Now, about those Arab refugees... When the United Nations Relief Works Agency--UNRWA--was set up to assist Arab refugees created as a result of the Arab attempt on Israel's life which backfired, the very word refugee had to be redefined to assist those people. So many Arabs were recent arrivals into the Palestine Mandate themselves that UNRWA had to adjust the very definition of "refugee" from its prior meaning of persons normally and traditionally resident to those who lived in the Mandate for a minimum of only two years prior to 1948...Please read that last line again. Recall that there were hundreds of millions of people who became refugees all over the world during the last few violent centuries. And, even more to the point, for every Arab who was forced to flee the fighting that Arabs started (after all, how dare Jews want in one tiny, resurrected state what Arabs demand for themselves in some two dozen others), a Jewish refugee was forced to flee "Arab"/Muslim lands into Israel and elsewhere...but with no UNRWA set up to assist them. As for those "native Palestinians" Abbas plans to inundate Israel with, Arafat himself was born in Cairo, Egypt. Scores of thousands of other Arabs came from Egypt earlier in the latter 19th century with Muhammad Ali and son's Ibrahim Pasha's armies and, like Arafat a bit later, settled in "Palestine." Please refer to this url in Pakistan Today for the derivation of this name http://www.paktoday.com/honig16.htm. During the mandatory period after World War I, the League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission recorded additional scores of thousands of Egyptian, Syrian, and other Arabs entering into Palestine and settling there. Want some more "native Palestinians?" Hamas' patron saint, Sheikh Izzedin al-Qassam, for whom its militant wing (those who blow up the teen clubs, buses, and such) and rockets are named, was from Latakia, Syria. Like many if not most others, the Sheikh was an Arab settler in Palestine. Mind you that this is the same Hamas that butchers Jewish "settler" babes and grandmas. And the same Hamas that says no Israel--regardless of size--has a right to exist. In this, however, as those with active neurons have already figured out, its vision is simply a more honest version of that of Abbas' Arafatians themselves. It is estimated that for each one of these incoming Arab settlers who were recorded, many others crossed the border under cover of darkness to enter into one of the few areas in the region where any economic development was going on because of the influx of Jewish capital. These folks later became known as "native Palestinians." Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from some of those same "Arab" countries--Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, Yemen, and so forth--became labeled the settlers. While this is not to say that there were not native Arabs also living in Palestine, it is to say that many, if not most, of the Arabs were also relative newcomers themselves. Given the Dar ul-Islam world outlook of Arabs, however, it was simply considered legitimate for them to conquer, colonize, and settle any and all of such lands. So, many of the villages set up in the "West Bank" and elsewhere were settlements established by Arab settlers. Read that last sentence again also... There were Jews whose families never left Israel/Judaea/Palestine over the centuries, despite the tragedies of two, well-documented major wars for their freedom and independence with Rome, forced conversions of the Byzantines, the Diaspora, Crusades, and other nightmares. So, why is it supposedly now acceptable for Arabs from surrounding lands to settle in Palestine, but not for Israel's Jews, half of whom were refugees themselves from Arab/Muslim lands... the other side of the refugee coin nobody talks about. Jews owned land and lived in Judea (Judean=Jew) and Samaria until they were massacred by Arabs in the 1920s and 1930s. And that brings me back to the issue of the '49 Auschwitz/armistice lines... After Colonial Secretary Churchill's creation of the Emirate of Transjordan in 1922 from the lion's share of the original 1920 Palestine Mandate, experts such as former Under Secretary of State Eugene Rostow have long pointed out that the "West Bank" was non-apportioned territory--much of which was State land--belonging to no individuals and open to settlement by all residents--Jews, Arabs, etc.--of the Mandate. Despite Abbas' fantasies, Arabs certainly did not exclusively own this land, and when Transjordan grabbed it in the 1948 fighting, it was an illegal occupier (indeed, at the time, only two states recognized its land grab). Keep all of this in mind when you hear Abbas proclaim that Israel must withdraw from every inch of "Arab" land. As a result of that 1948 land grab, "Trans" (across) was dropped from the name of the Arab state which thus came to exist on both banks of the Jordan River (80% of "Palestine"), and Jordan saw to it that Jews were ousted from these lands. At the same time, more Arabs poured in. In 1967, despite the pleas of Israeli leaders given to him via diplomatic channels, King Hussein of Jordan listened to President Nasser of Egypt and joined what he thought would be the final destruction of Israel. Nasser had already blockaded Israel at the Straits of Tiran (a casus belli big time), sent the U.N peace-keeping force away, and amassed over 100,00 troops, planes, tanks, and such right up to Israel's armistice line. By the way, since the days of the Pharaohs, Egypt had used Gaza--which Israel has already withdrawn from--as one of its main invasion routes to attack Jews in Israel. Some things change, some things don't... Anyway, that's how Jordan lost that which it gained illegally in the '48 fighting. Which brings us, again, back to the '49 armistice lines... After the fighting was over in those six days in '67, much debate took place over the fate of the non-apportioned territories of the Mandate. Funny, in most other wars, when an aggressor attacked a neighbor repeatedly from territory, he frequently wound up losing said territory for good if he lost the war. And territory was often grabbed by others--including the United states--even if it wasn't attacked. National security interests and such... But, this is the Jew of the Nations we're talking about... So I guess it was expected to teach Christians how to be better Christians by simply turning its Jewish cheek over and over and over again to its enemies. While Arabs and their supporters tried hard to get the precise wording that they wanted, sanity won the day when the final draft of U N Security Council Resolution 242 got passed ( Rostow was one of its architects) in the months after the Six Day War. Israel was not expected to withdraw to the Auschwitz lines yet again, and the travesty of justice which occurred in 1949 was to be undone. Recall, as would become the pattern, the U N. did nothing to stop the Arabs' aggression in 1948 and got involved only when the Jews turned the tide. When it finally acted, the U N sought to limit Arab losses, not to stop initial Arab aggression. As has been written often over the years, the words the and all were deliberately left out of the wording referring to withdrawal from territories, and any such withdrawal was to be made to secure and recognized borders in the context of real peace treaties, not "let's fool the Jews" hudnas. To those who want to discuss these issues but have never looked at a map of the world or the Middle East in this context, you must now do so or refrain from comment. I dare you, on the former, to find Israel without a magnifying glass... and you'll find it just a bit easier on the latter. The point is that Israel--half of whose Jews were refugees from the "Arab" world--takes up less than one half of one per cent of the territory in its neck of the woods. The issue has never been about Israel's size, but that others--be they Kurds, Copts, Berbers, black African Sudanese, Assyrians, Jews, and so forth--are also deserving of their own slice of justice in what Arabs simply call purely Arab patrimony. This, indeed, sums up the Arab-Israel dilemma in a nutshell. So, that brings us to the proper response to Abbas and his non-peace plan. Abbas' Arafatians have long held to a destruction in phases plan for Israel. After the Arab defeat in '67, they shifted to a policy which would get Israel back to its indefensible '49 armistice lines, and then--after a period of their own arms build up and such--would do what the Prophet Muhammad did to the Quraysh after the hudna--ceasefire--he granted them... move in for the final kill. Israel must insist--despite the feathers it will ruffle abroad--on justice for itself. It is entitled to thrive, not just barely survive. If it does not insist on a rectification of the travesty imposed upon it in 1949, Israel will remain forever dependent on the good will of others (who may withhold that good will at will) to "save" it in times of crisis. Israel had such promises before which never materialized when they were needed. Any 22nd state for Arabs must not come at the expense of the sole state Jews possess. If there is to be a rump state in an area which really has no room for another state, it must be that additional one created for Arabs in Palestine (their 2nd, not first) that much of the rest of the world insists upon... not Israel. Given all of this, there is therefore only one response that Israel must give to Abbas--whether or not Hamas plays along with the prisoners' "peace" plan. When it comes to the crucial issues of a return to the Auschwitz lines and Arab inundation of Israel by jihadist alleged refugees, Israel must state loudly and clearly... None... zilch ... nada. Gerald A. Honigman, a Florida educator, has created and conducted counter-Arab propaganda programs for college youth, has lectured on numerous campuses and other platforms, and has publicly debated Arab spokesmen. His articles and op-eds have been published in both the print media and on websites. Contact him at honigman6@msn.com or go to his website: http://geraldahonigman.com/blog.php |
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WHILE EUROPE SLEPT
Posted by mrla 26, June 8, 2006. |
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This interview with Bruce Bawer was conducted by Jamie Glazov. Jamie Glazov is Frontpage Magazine's managing editor. He edited and wrote the introduction to David Horowitz's new book "Left Illusions". He is also the co-editor (with David Horowitz) of the new book "The Hate America Left" and the author of "Canadian Policy Toward Khrushchev's Soviet Union" (McGill-Queens University Press, 2002) and "15 Tips on How to be a Good Leftist." Email him at jglazov@rogers.com. This article appeared in FrontPageMagazine.com on May 23, 2006 and
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Frontpage Interview's guest today is Bruce Bawer, a New York writer who has lived in Europe since 1998. He is a literary critic, translator, poet, and the author of books about being gay in America and fundamentalist Christianity. His most recent book is While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within (Doubleday). FP: Bruce Bawer, welcome to Frontpage Interview. Bawer: Hi Jamie, thanks for having me. FP: I just finished your book. It was a fascinating and powerful read. I know the answer to this question, but let's help our readers get acquainted with you. Tell us why you ended up writing this book. Bawer: In 1998 I moved from New York, where I'm from, to Amsterdam. I loved the Netherlands -- its tolerance, its secularism, its heritage of freedom and learning and culture. But in early 1999, living in a largely Muslim area called the Oud West, I saw another side of the Netherlands, and of Europe, that I hadn't seen before, or even been particularly aware of. The Oud West seemed less a neighborhood than an enclave -- a piece of another society that had been dropped down into the city and that lived apart from it and its values. Just to walk from downtown Amsterdam into the Oud West was to experience a staggering contrast. I soon came to realize that Amsterdam wasn't unique -- virtually every major city in Europe had Muslim enclaves like this one. The people outside of them were living in a democracy, but the people in them were living in a theocracy, ruled by imams and elders who preached contempt for the host society and its values. They were against secular law, against pluralism, against freedom of speech and religion, against sexual equality. Husbands believed it was their sacred right to beat and rape their wives. Parents practiced honor killings and female genital mutilation. Unemployment and crime rates were through the roof. Most remarkable of all, nobody was saying or doing anything about any of this. European politicians took a hands-off attitude. Journalists sang the praises of multicultural society. With very few exceptions, nobody in a position of authority seemed willing to stand up for basic democratic values. FP: You were at one time, I think it would be safe to say, a man of the Left. But you grew quite critical of leftwing European attitudes toward the US, Israel and capitalism. Could you give us an insight into your intellectual journey in this context? Bawer: I've always thought of myself as a more or less classic Cold War liberal. But never New Left. The New Left always appalled me, and I've always been strongly anti-Communist. Yes, I've changed political alliances more than once over the years -- not because I've changed positions, but because the labels started meaning different things. This business of labels is maddening. In Stealing Jesus I criticized Christian fundamentalism and liberals loved it; in While Europe Slept, I criticize Islamic fundamentalism, which is by any measure a lot worse than Christian fundamentalism, and some of the same people who loved Stealing Jesus are appalled and think I've totally changed my politics, when in fact I'm being totally consistent. Anyway, as I explain in While Europe Slept, I moved to Europe in 1998, not long after Stealing Jesus came out, I looked forward to living in what I thought was a secular society. What I found, however, was a society governed according to what I gradually came to recognize as another kind of fundamentalism -- namely, big-government, welfare-state social democracy. European social democracy was rigid, doctrinaire, controlling. Social democrats ran politics, the media, and the academy, and they worked together to propagandize against their system's #1 competition in the world -- namely, American-style liberal democracy. The anti-Americanism I encountered every single day in the European media floored me. The American media had given me a very flattering picture of today's Western Europe. But reading European papers and watching European TV news and talking to individual Europeans, I got a picture of America I hardly recognized. They depicted a capitalistic nightmare straight out of Upton Sinclair, a country where education and health care were only for the rich and where there was no such thing as unemployment insurance or retirement benefits. The hostility to America was ubiquitous, and reflexive. Ditto the hostility to Israel, which Europeans have been taught by their elite to see almost exclusively as America's 51st state, an oppressor of Palestinians and an illegal occupier of Arab and Muslim lands. I had been in many ways a critic of America, but in Europe I increasingly came to appreciate its virtues -- and repeatedly found myself in social situations where I was obliged to defend it against people who regurgitated inane anti-American clichés that they'd been fed since infancy. FP: Tell us about European attitudes toward immigration/immigrants in comparison to American attitudes. Bawer: For decades, Western Europe has been admitting huge numbers of immigrants for decades, most of them Muslims. But the way they've handled them has been disastrous. The European elite hates America so much that instead of recognizing the U.S. as a model of how to integrate newcomers, they rejected the American approach entirely. They chose to view immigrants as members of groups rather than as individuals, as dependent children rather than adults who are potentially self-sufficient and responsible, and as exotic alien creatures who should remain exotic rather than as Europeans in the making. When I was first living in Norway, politicians and journalists were in the habit of congratulating Muslims for having turned Norway into a "colorful society" -- a fargerik felleskap. Nobody seemed to realize how condescending this was, or how at odds it was with Martin Luther King's dream of a colorblind society. I was also shocked to hear people refer to immigrants' European-born children as "second-generation immigrants." And their children were "third-generation immigrants." This summed up an incredibly dramatic difference in the ways Americans and Europeans thought about immigrants. My father's parents were Polish, but never in my life had it occurred to me to think of myself as a third-generation immigrant or of my father as a second-generation immigrant. The idea was ludicrous. We were Americans, period. America encourages immigrants to go to work, learn the language, and become full members of society; Europe encourages immigrants to live apart and maintain their cultures and lifestyles and values without adjusting in the slightest to their new environment. This is called multiculturalism. And it's been a disaster. In America, immigrants tend to make the switch to English relatively quickly; by contrast, an incredible number of European children (and even grandchildren) of immigrants are barely able to speak the language of the country in which they were born. Immigrants to the U.S. are also far more likely into enter the work force than immigrants in Europe, and are better paid. In Europe, the elite prefers its minorities unintegrated, and the supposed reason is that it respects differences. But the real reason is a profound discomfort with the idea of "them" becoming "us." Anyone can become an American; but an immigrant to Norway or the Netherlands will never really be thought of by anyone as Norwegian or Dutch. In Norway there's a comedienne named Shabana Rehman whose parents brought her to Norway from Pakistan when she was a baby. On her website, she writes: "I speak strikingly good Norwegian. But most native Norwegians I meet wish that it was a little broken." I've seen this attitude. Americans are delighted to hear immigrants speaking English. By contrast, many Norwegians are uncomfortable when they hear a Pakistani speaking Norwegian. One thing I still find remarkable in Norway is the frequency with which people use the expression Like barn leker best. It's a very common expression and it means something like "Children play best with other children who are like themselves." I've heard it being said a thousand times by people who think of themselves as devout multiculturalists. The most successful immigrant group in the history of the world is American Jews. Why? Because they integrated enthusiastically into the mainstream of American society. They rejected the ghetto and embraced American pluralism. In Europe, this same eagerness to belong, to contribute, and to thrive -- and not remain segregated and ghettoized -- led to the Jews' near-extermination. It seems to me that part of the reason why anti-Semitism is so widespread in Europe while Islam is often treated with kid gloves is that the European elite has a reflexive contempt for a group that blends in and a reflexive respect for a group that holds itself proudly apart and resists assimilation. That's a formula for disaster. FP: Muslim immigration to Europe has meant higher crime and the perpetration of honor killing, female genital mutilation, and forced marriages on European soil. Yet many Europeans remain morally indignant about something America has supposedly done to them or something horrible that it supposedly represents. And they remain silent on what radical Muslims are perpetrating on their soil. This is a bit strange, no? Bawer: It's very strange. I never get used to it. It's kind of schizophrenic, actually. On one level there's an enthusiasm for America. America is sexy, exciting. Europeans love American TV, American pop music. They wear Yankee caps and t-shirts with Old Glory on them. If you're out someplace for the evening and somebody hears you're an American, they want to talk to you and hear about your life. It's thrilling for them. But the very same people will then turn around and tell you how horrible your country is -- everybody in America is overweight, nobody has health insurance, they're all idiots, and so forth. This is what they've been taught in school and heard in the media. Weirdly, it's their very enthusiasm for America, I think, that feeds their eagerness to believe this nonsense. They're so in awe of America, so drawn to it, that they need to believe that there's something horrible at the heart of it in order to be content with their own lives in their own societies. Besides, buying into the idea that America is the #1 problem in the world -- the #1 threat to world peace and so on -- is a good way of distracting themselves from the genuine problems facing their own countries. After all, in Europe, there's a lot of pressure not to address those problems. To criticize any aspect of immigrant communities or immigration policies is to risk being called a racist. In Norway, there's been a rash of cold-blooded murders by rejected asylum seekers, who, after being rejected, incredible as it sounds, are simply allowed to roam free in the streets of Oslo. Recently, one of them walked into the downtown Oslo office of somebody I knew, a wonderful doctor, and stabbed him to death with a huge knife he'd brought with him. On the day it happened, a mutual friend of ours, who was despondent and in shock, said, "Something needs to be done about these asylum seekers." And as soon as the words were out of his mouth, he added, "Oh, I shouldn't say that, it sounds racist." He hadn't said anything racist. But this is how people have been trained to think. It's paralyzing. So it is that the frustration and anger over the crisis in their own societies is deflected to a safe target -- America. You can say anything you want about Americans and nobody will call you a racist. FP: What is your perspective on what we could call European dhimmitude and the reflexive European appeasement mentality? Bawer: Americans and Europeans both learned a lesson from World War II -- but we learned different lessons. America learned that evil should never be appeased. If Britain and France had not caved in to Hitler at Munich, the war and the Holocaust might never have happened. Europeans, however, have been taught that the lesson of WWII is the evil of war, pure and simple. War should be avoided at all costs. Dialogue is always better than armed conflict. This mentality feeds anti-Americanism -- instead of admiring America's willingness to defend its freedoms in war, which after all is what made possible the liberation of Western Europe from the Nazis -- duh! -- Europeans see Americans as people who simply love to make war. We're primitive, bloodthirsty warmongers. They see themselves, by contrast, as the preachers and guardians of a new, more noble and sophisticated era of peace. And they'll make any compromise in order to preserve that peace. European Muslim leaders know this. And they've manipulated it brilliantly. European politicians have become classic dhimmis, giving in to Muslim demands and being careful to avoid giving any offense whatsoever in order to maintain social harmony. The result, of course, is that Muslim leaders just get more and more demanding, and more and more easily offended. Of all the heads of government in Europe, the only real exception to this rule is Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the prime minister of Denmark, who in response to the uproar over the Muhammed cartoons stood up valiantly for freedom of speech. In Norway, by contrast, the editor of the first publication to reprint the cartoons ended up being pressured by the Norwegian government to apologize, which he did, abjectly, at a press conference in a government office building in the presence of the largest group of imams ever brought together in Norway. It was a deeply disturbing episode. But it came and went, and afterwards everybody seemed eager to sweep it under the rug, to pretend that it hadn't happened or that it wasn't really as weird and disturbing and disgusting as it was. Dhimmitude is bursting out all over. Last year in Britain, the House of Commons voted for a bill that would have punished offensive speech about somebody else's religion -- it took the House of Lords to put the kibosh on it. In Norway, such a law was actually passed late last year. It's now a crime in Norway to insult somebody else's religion. Under this law, the burden of proof is on the accused, and the punishment is imprisonment. This is chilling. And it's only the beginning. FP: What do you think the cartoon controversy signified? What does it portend? What does the case of Denmark teach us? Bawer: What happened in the cartoon controversy was that Danish Muslim leaders thought they could get lots of Muslims out into the streets making noise and making threats, and thereby force the Danish government to punish Jyllands-Posten editors and cartoonists in order to quiet things down. This would have put a chill on freedom of speech and advanced Islamist goals in Europe by a giant step. What they didn't count on was Anders Fogh Rasmussen. The case of Denmark teaches us that there are people in Europe who see what's going on and are deeply disturbed and angry about it -- who love their countries and want to preserve their democracies. The people in Denmark who feel this way are lucky because they have a leader who agrees with them and who's not afraid to say so and to act accordingly. It was very cheering during the cartoon controversy to see in the polls that Fogh Rasmussen's posture on all this enjoyed the support of a huge majority of the Danish people. Even in the face of a boycott of Danish companies in the Muslim world, most Danes felt: "Okay, let's take an economic hit, it's worth it. We're standing up for principle." The lesson of this is that Europe needs principled leaders who believe fiercely in secular pluralistic democracy and who aren't afraid to offend democracy's enemies. What's dismaying is that Denmark has taken a lot of heat from journalists and politicians elsewhere in Europe. Denmark stood up for democracy, and it's being attacked for being culturally insensitive, anti-Muslim, racist. Some Danes are very upset about this. They worry that their country's image has been tarnished. They don't seem to grasp that the people criticizing their prime minister are dhimmis, and they're criticizing him for not being a dhimmi. It's also dismaying that as time goes by, the fortitude of some Danes seems to be ebbing. Apparently, they're increasingly willing to make compromises for "peace." Something similar also appears to be going on in the Netherlands, where recent polls revealed a surprising hostility toward Ayaan Hirsi Ali -- whose only crime has been standing up for the freedom of the people who despise her. Europe needs a few Churchills to keep the people from back down -- to remind them on a regular basis how much they have to be grateful for and how much they have to lose if they don't stand up for it. FP: Is there any hope for reform in Europe? Bawer: We have to hope. Some days I'm more optimistic than others. Sometimes, alas, it seems as if the elite appeasers are so firmly in control of the reins of government, and the masses of people are so used to being passive and letting the elite call the shots, that it's hard to imagine all of this working itself out in a positive way. All that's certain is that the Muslim minorities are growing in numbers and in self-confidence and in power -- and that many Europeans are upset about this, and frustrated with official inaction. There's already been a noticeable movement toward right-wing, anti-immigration parties, some of which are cheering oases of pro-American and pro-freedom sentiment, and some of which are disturbingly racist and fascist. If European governments don't stop being dhimmis and appeasers, there'll be more and more movement in the direction of such parties. A Europe torn between nativist fascism and Islamofascism is a grim prospect, all too reminiscent of the situation in Europe in the 1930s. Some days it feels avoidable. Other days it feels inevitable. FP: Bruce Bawer, thank you for joining us. Bawer: Thank you, Jamie. Contact mrla 26 at mrla26@aol.com |
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PROBLEMS WITH THE WITHDRAWAL PLAN; OLMERT TOLD CONGRESS, CONGRESS SWALLOWED IT
Posted by Richard Shulman, June 8, 2006. |
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PROBLEMS WITH THE WITHDRAWAL PLAN "My problem with the consolidation [plan] is that you get a Palestinian quasi-state without a peace agreement and the terror continues." Minister Meir Sheetrit (Kadima) quoted in an interview by G. Alon, Hebrew edition of Haaretz, 22 May 2006, page B2. (IMRA, 5/23). The government is using euphemisms for withdrawal or abandonment. What is consolidated is the terrorist control over territory and opportunities to fire rockets at Israel and shoot at Israelis in the "consolidated" ghettoes. This doesn't provide security for Israel but insecurity. It doesn't change demography but makes room for more Arabs to enter the area. It doesn't resolve Israel's borders, which the US won't recognize. What is the big deal about permanent borders, anyway? If the permanent borders are unsatisfactory, they are worse than impermanent ones, such as Israel has. BUSH THINKS EVERYBODY IS BEHIND HIM ON IRAN He said the international community opposes Iran getting nuclear weapons (Arutz-7, 5/24). He thinks the world is behind him. Yes, but far behind. China and Russia don't oppose Iran, not with sanctions. Russia helps Iran advance, in nuclear development. The Muslim world doesn't object. That's one-third the world population, right there. The term, "international community," is vague. It gives the impression of legitimacy, but it does not legitimize anything. ISRAELI SUPREME COURT CHARACTERIZED FROM WITHIN Just-retired Supreme Court Judge Cheshin criticized chief justice Barak for choosing Arab civil rights over protection from terrorism. The chief justice quashes measures that might protect the right to safety of thousands of terrorist victims, in favor of a radical version of civil rights for Arabs. Israelis are getting annoyed with Barak for putting over his personal views rather than ruling on the basis of law (Arutz-7, 5/24). Are they? I think Barak's views are more radical than civil libertarian. He doesn't care about civil rights. He lets Jews get beaten up and falsely arrested. U.S. DRIVES NAIL INTO ISRAEL'S COFFIN Israel gains a strategic advantage by developing and inserting its own electronics into planes it buys from the US. The US forbids Israel from doing that with the F-35 (Arutz-7, 5/24). No explanation given; none asked. What business is it of the US what Israel does with the planes after it buys them? This is the US, whose President just told PM Olmert that it is an ally of Israel. Seems more likely that it seeks to hobble Israeli defense against Arab invasion. OLMERT TOLD CONGRESS; CONGRESS SWALLOWED IT First Olmert spun out a long tale of his personal life and then the usual hot air about the binding ties between the two countries. (It is binding for Israel like being handcuffed to a detective: the US says, don't defend yourself, don't set your own borders, don't sell your own weapons, and don't enhance the ones you buy from us.) Then he gave a "spin" to his scheme for retreat that he now calls "realignment," although it is abandons Jewish patrimony, holy sites, aquifer, strategic depth, and secure borders. He said that since the P.A. is dedicated to Israel's destruction, Israel cannot negotiate peace with it. Israel can just provide humanitarian relief to the people in it. "Israel commends this Congress for initiating the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act which sends a firm clear message that the United States of America will not tolerate terrorism in any form." (Initiating an act is not the same as passing it. The President is trying to get Congress to insert the usual waiver, enabling him to ignore it. Thus Congress and the Presidents indicate that the USA tolerates terrorism in anti-Israel form.) Olmert said, "We will NOT yield to terror. We will NOT surrender to terror... and we WILL WIN the war on terror and restore peace to our societies." He did not show how abandoning most of Judea-Samaria, "so that a mini-terror state can fill the vacuum would actually reduce friction and 'prevent much of the conflict,' when the conflict is over Israel's very existence (including the return of refugees to within Israel)." (He did not explain how retreat is not yielding to terrorism. He did not explain how providing some of the governmental services for Hamas does not make Hamas' job easier by helping to hold that failed society together under Hamas rule.) "The painful but necessary process of Disengagement from the Gaza Strip and Northern Samaria was an essential step." (The result, aside from ruining thousands of his countrymen's lives, was to turn Gaza into a much better armed, terrorist headquarters, and a base from which rockets are launched against Israel every day. It is a prelude to the new "realignment." Unfortunately, the politicians and media talk in generalities and do not examine such facts as rocket attacks and their potential. If they did, they might certify Olmert as insane.) Olmert prays for Sharon's recovery. (Is he kidding! Sharon probably is alive only technically and by virtue of a machine, but the secretive regime does not inform the people. Olmert cynically wraps himself in Sharon's mantle. But it is a mantle half of corruption, and in that half, Olmert appears to be a worthy successor.) Next came mention of Sharon's devotion to the unity of Jerusalem. (What about Sharon's previously expressed devotion to the settlements he destroyed, to the ones he planned to abandon, and to the ones he claimed to be keeping but the old strategist arranged fences around such that the Arabs could take target practice upon the Jews trapped within? What about the scheme for pre-emptive withdrawal, only to find the US insisting that Israel negotiate further withdrawal, but without bargaining chips? That leaves the territory annexed to Jerusalem and perhaps even the Old City.) Quoting Sharon, "The Palestinians will forever be our neighbors. They are an inseparable part of this land, as are we. Israel has no desire to rule over them, nor to oppress them. They too have a right for freedom and national inspirations." He admits they have a culture of hatred (IMRA, 5/24). Why does Israel have to accommodate Arab usurpers whose aspiration is to conquer Israel? Pres. Bush called the plan for retreat "bold." Retreat is bold? Then up is down. Imagine having to endure a long speech of platitudes and false rationalization! Congress deserves it, for its phony sanctions on P.A. terrorism. PERES FLIRTS WITH REALITY Vice PM Peres withdrew his offer to set up free-industrial zones between Israel and the P.A.. He admitted they would become targets for terrorists, and that the burden of security-checking would fall solely upon Israel, by default. He also suggested that Gaza Arabs speed the export of perishables by using an airport in Egypt, rather than the one in Israel. Otherwise, they would be delayed by security-checking of shipments "every tomato". (IMRA, 5/24). Previously he had mocked the necessity of thorough security checking, by exaggerating it as checking every tomato. Now he seems to take that necessity seriously. Terrorists were attacking the free-industrial zones before Peres had made his offer. His offer was the kind of inanity for which Peres has become infamous among the informed. Someone wrote a book devoted to Peres' striking nonsense. In the several years since, the author could have composed a couple more. If Peres were not so interested n surrendering to the Arabs, he would have condemned the Arabs for impoverishing their own people by slowing down the passage of goods and keeping Arabs from their jobs in those zones. He would have observed that there cannot be side-by-side peace when one side, the Arab side, deters cooperation both by Israel and by its own people. And then Israel and the US are supposed to give those Arabs humanitarian aid? EGYPT WANTS TO PUT ITS NOSE INTO TENT Egypt has offered to send troops into Gaza, to keep warring militias apart. The factions are examining the offer and Israel has not at this point commented (IMRA, 5/24). Once the troops are there, they might help boost terrorism against Israel or help support an invasion of Israel. The US has seen to it that Egypt has the means. Egypt has been practicing invasion for years. It is their military doctrine. Olmert erred in citing Egypt an example of Arab ability to make peace with Israel notwithstanding. He erred along the lines of closing his eyes to Egyptian designs on Israel. It is popular to do so. HOW THE P.A. MEDIA REPORTS THE WAR Arab terrorists have shot rockets at Israeli cities, but the P.A. media does not report that. Terrorists also blow up bombs in Israeli cities. P.A. leaders rejoiced that a recent one killed an American. Seeking out such terrorists, Israeli troops raid P.A. cities where they hide. A recent raid by troops in plain clothes, intended not to attract attention, nevertheless led to a shootout. The P.A. media condemned the raid as terrorism (though it did not target civilians, unlike P.A. raids on Israel). The media praised the slain Arabs as martyrs. It condemned Israeli retaliation by artillery as random and brutal (IMRA, 5/25 from Michael Widlanski) whereas they aim at empty hills and buildings and futile). Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
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THE THREE MONKEYS
Posted by Barry Rubin, June 8, 2006. |
| Some time around the 1920s a strange statue became wildly popular in the West. It consisted of three monkeys, which, respectively, had their hands over their eyes, ears, and mouth. The inscription said: "See no evil; hear no evil; speak no evil." This is a good hint of how the Middle East is often dealt with, at least if one uses--as did the original statue--the word "evil" in an ironic manner. There are many examples of how this works if properly adapted to specifics in the region. Let's start with the first one, which might be formulated as to see nothing but evil regarding the United States. Here's an interesting statistic. If one takes only economic and development aid over the last 12 years on a per capita basis, U.S. assistance to the Palestinians is almost as high as that to Israel, the number one American aid recipient. Actually, even this formula undercounts U.S. help to the Palestinians. After all, the United States is the only country that gives Israel substantial economic help but Washington worked hard to persuade other countries to donate billions of dollars to the Palestinian Authority (PA) as well. That is not the kind of fact you are going to find in the Arab media, which constantly harp on how America is anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, and anti-Palestinian. But this is the kind of factor that should be taken into account when people say that anti-Americanism is a result of U.S. policies. It is most often the result of ignorance about what are U.S. policies. Moving on to the second case, this might be called to define as evil anything critical about those designated as moderate Palestinians, especially in the new era when for many observers Fatah represents the relative good guys against Hamas. Yet, while some things can be said in favor of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's intentions, they have little effect even on Fatah and often reflect a continuing extremism. For example, take the effort to overstate the moderation of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. His Hamas rivals picked as security chief for the PA not just a terrorist but a man who had been involved in the murder of U.S. government employees and might even have direct ties to al-Qaida. Abbas responded with his own appointment of Mahmoud Damra (Abu Awad) who had headed Arafat's bodyguard, Force 17, and is wanted by Israel for involvement in terrorist attacks resulting in the deaths of at least five civilians. While his new referendum is being widely hailed as a moderate breakthrough, it actually says some devastating things about Abbas. Here let's just focus on one: the program actually endorses terrorist attacks in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, a stance totally in contrast to PA commitments under the Oslo agreements and the Roadmap. The PA has long been permissive about terrorism and given it good publicity. Actually giving it explicit endorsement is something new. Then there is the third principle in this trilogy, a sudden U.S. determination to define criticism of Egypt's regime as evil. Make no mistake: Egypt is at a turning point right now. President Husni Mubarak is cracking down on any shred of the apparent openness offered for public relations' purposes in the last year. The main opposition candidate in the last election has now been sentenced to a prison term, the emergency laws renewed, and widespread arrests are going on. The visit of his son, Gamal, to Washington and his reception by high government officials is being viewed in Egypt as official U.S. endorsement of the plan to make him successor. Whatever happened to U.S. support for reform and democracy? The next two or more decades of Egypt's future are being locked in place right now in a way that would doom Egyptian hopes of anything better. But to really understand the worldview that underlies the above examples I had to look at the front page of the June 3 Washington Post. In big headlines there are two articles that sort of ask the question, "What the hell is evil any way?" One of them is entitled: "A Man of the People's Needs and Wants: Ahmadinejad Praised in Iran as a Caring Leader." The article then explains that Iranians love extremist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad because he promises to make everyone's life better. Now to point out that dictators are popular in Middle East countries and that making big promises is a way of gaining populist support is certainly valid. But to read this article one would not know that there is a huge dissident movement (possibly a majority of Iran's people), anti-regime riots, and bloggers ridiculing him as a major embarrassment. And that's not all. There is another article on the same page with a remarkably parallel line headlined, "Cubans Jailed in U.S. as Spies Are Hailed at Home as Heroes." It seems that Cuban spies in America are highly regarded by the dictatorship that rules the island. Presumably, most Cubans are really asking how anyone who got to the United States would want to work for the government that is oppressing and repressing them. In a society where so many intellectuals and journalists have lost any moral compass--in fact, decry the whole idea of such things--it is easy for green to become blue; bad seem like good; and up appear to be down. Barry Rubin is Director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, Interdisciplinary Center university. His co-authored book, Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography, (Oxford University Press) is now available in paperback and in Hebrew. His latest book, The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East, was published by Wiley in September. Prof. Rubin's columns can now be read online at: http://gloria.idc.ac.il/columns/column.html. |
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AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT BUSH FROM MERETZ, TIKKUN, AND PEACE NOW
Posted by Steven Plaut, June 8, 2006. |
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Dear Mister President: We are horrified! We are outraged! What a tragic sabotaging of peace! We just heard about the latest provocation of the United States in Iraq. How dare you occupiers conduct an air raid and targeted assassination against the peace activist and militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi! He was the best key to achieving peace! Don't you realize that such behavior of yours just contributes to the cycle of violence in the Middle East? Mister President, on can only make peace with one's enemies! Your murder of al-Zarqawi is nothing more than symbolic genocide of the Iraqi people! Now that you have conducted this crime against humanity, things will only get worse. After al-Zarqawi has been murdered, now the conflict in Iraq will be led by real extremists and terrorists. You blew it! Holding talks with al-Zarqawi instead of bombing him would have been the wise course of action, the courageous step for people seeking peace. There is no military solution to the problems of terrorism! The only way to handle the situation in Iraq is to end the illegal occupation of Iraq, through an immediate unilateral removal of all American and British soldiers and settlers. Al-Zarqawi was a legitimate representative of his people. He enjoyed popular support. Just because you do not like his opinions was no reason to kill him! The only way you can make up for this war crime is to open negotiations at once with the remaining leadership of Iraqi al-Qaeda and conduct talks with them in good faith. You must also restore American funding to all activist groups and parties in Iraq, including the local chapter of al-Qaeda. Mister President, peace is what must be sought. Like the Prophets in the Bible say, pursue peace! Stop the cycle of violence! End the occupation! Self-determination and freedom for the Al-Qaeda movement of Iraq! All we are saying is give peace a chance! (PS. Anyone know if any ISM members were injured when serving as human shields for al-Zarqawi?) Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments -- both seriously and satirically -- on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. Or contact him by email at splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il |
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WARNING BELLS
Posted by Manhigut Yehudit, June 8, 2006. |
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This week's major power outages in Israel should be setting off all of our warning bells. Due to an unexplained problem in the Ashkelon power plant (which has been the target of tens of Kassam rockets from the Gaza Strip), cities all over Israel found themselves without electricity. Hundreds were trapped in stifling elevators, tens of thousands were stranded in colossal traffic jams, unresponsive home respirators compromised the health of hundreds of Israelis, businesses had to shut down and the country as a whole went into semi-paralysis. The power plant in Ashkelon provides 25% of Israel's electricity. In this week's power outage, it continued to produce electricity, albeit at lesser capacity. But since the disengagement, missiles have frequently hit near the plant. Every intelligent Israeli should be asking himself some critical questions: What will happen when a direct missile hit from Gaza shuts down the entire plant? How many days will it take to repair the damage? How many lives will be lost? How many people will nearly suffocate in airless elevators? How much damage will be done to the economy? And last but not least, will the government admit that missiles caused the outage, or will it deny that anything is amiss? Camp David and the Oslo Accords created a process in which Israel has slowly but surely divested itself of its basic ability to defend itself. All the Prime Ministers since then -- both from the Right and from the Left -- empowered this process. Binyamin Netanyahu could have changed direction after his 1996 election victory that gave him a clear mandate to halt Oslo. But after Arafat instigated the Western Wall riots in which sixteen IDF soldiers were killed, Netanyahu chose to warmly shake his hand instead of eliminating him. That was the point at which the Right adopted the Oslo rationale. Today, ten years after Netanyahu's "brave" handshake, Israel faces significant strategic threats from both the north and the south. But instead of solid and comprehensive military action, all that Israel's leadership can provide is denial or IDF sponsored pyrotechnics of insignificant military impact. Netanyahu proved in 1996 and once again before the disengagement that the classic Right has no answer for the Oslo rationale. Clearly, the only possible direction for the belief based public is up -- toward leadership of our nation. Contact the Manhigut Yehudit organization by email at Manhigut-Yehudit@jewishisrael.org |
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SPEAK OUT AGAINST PRESBYTERIAN DIVESTMENT
Posted by David Meir-Levi, June 7, 2006. |
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Soon the Presbyterian leadership will meet in Alabama for the 217th General Assembly. One of the main items on the agenda will be divestment from israel. I most sincerely urge all of you to write to the two Presbyterian leaders listed below. You can use my letter if you want, rewritten in your own words. See below. You can mail to the addresses below. You can also email Mr. Ufford-Chase at the address of his
assistant, valery small: at please take action immediately, since the GA is only a few days away.
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Rick Ufford-Chase, Moderator
Clifton Kirkpatrick
Dear Mr... I write you with the hope that you will take to heart my input, and keep my words in mind as you speak and vote at the 217th Presbyterian General Assembly. We share common goals for Israel and Palestine: two states living in peace and harmony, the need to alleviate the suffering of Palestinians and Israelis, and a rejection of terror and war. But peace begins with trust, and trust begins with truth. Palestinian leadership has lied to the world for decades, while telling the truth about its intentions and actions, in Arabic, to its own people. A Palestinian government committed to peace must, as a necessary precondition, stop the terrorism, stop the incitement, and start building their state to be run by rule of law: and rule of law means that terrorism and armed gangs must be outlawed. The suffering of the Palestinians, a dire and tragic situation, is a function solely of the security steps that Arafat's terror war (now continued by Hamas) has forced Israel to take. Like any other nation, Israel must protect its society from the depredations of suicide bombers and snipers and road bombs and Qassam rockets. When these stop, the fence can come down, the road blocks can be dismantled, and the situation can return to the way it was from June 12, 1967 to July 1, 1994. In light of the above, I wish to turn your attention to the following:
Israel has shown, many times over, that it wants peace, it accepts the creation of a state of Palestine, it wants resolution via negotiations, and it is willing and able to make hard and painful sacrifices for peace. Palestinian leadership has endlessly promised terror without end until Israel is destroyed and its Jews annihilated. Divesting from Israel confuses the fire fighter with the arsonist. Divesting from Israel supports the terrorists and their heinous goals. Rather than divesting, the church, and many other institutions that seek peace in the Middle East, should be investing: investing in the economies of both countries, so that people across the widest possible spectrum can see the benefits of cooperation and amity. Most respectfully yours, David Meir-Levi David Meir-Levi is an American-born Israeli, currently living in Palo Alto. His expertise is in Near Eastern studies and the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is Director of Peace and Education at Israel Peace Initiative (www.ipi-usa.org). Contact him at david_meirlevi@hotmail.com |
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ARAB KIDS BRANDISH GUNS TO TEST IDF VIGILANCE
Posted by Bryna Berch, June 7, 2006. |
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This news item is archived at
The Post writers decided it was to test IDF vigilance. Maybe. More likely, it was the typical Arab trick of sending women and children into danger zones. If the IDF shot the kids, the PR was fantastic -- CNN would wax rightously indignant about the dastardly Jews killing poor innocent children. And if the soldiers didn't react, the "real" terrorists would have found a weak spot. Maybe next time these innocent 13 year olds will be armed with real guns. |
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A group of Palestinian children were sent towards the Gaza Strip border fence holding toy guns on Thursday in order to test the vigilance of the soldiers on duty. From a distance, troops noticed four apparently armed Palestinians approaching the border north of the Kissufim crossing. When the four were some 400 meters from the fence, the soldiers realized that they were children, who looked to be about 13 years of age, and that their guns were toys. The Gaza security fence has become the scene of almost daily incidences of would-be infiltrations from the Gaza Strip, attempted terror attacks, and occasionally exchanges of fire. Earlier Thursday, IDF forces arrested two unarmed Palestinians who breached the fence in order to cross into Israel. And only Monday, a Palestinian was shot and killed by IDF soldiers after they identified three men near the fence and fired at them, suspecting they intended to carry out an attack. |
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ABBAS' NEWEST BIG LIE
Posted by Evelyn Hayes, June 7, 2006. |
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According to Yuval Diskine, 20 million dollars have been smuggled into the Gaza Strip since last September and have reached Hamas hands. (Guysen.Israel.News) At a meeting of the Parliamentary Commission of Foreign Affairs and Defense, the head of the Shabak (general security services) added that advance signs of world Jihad activities have been discovered in Shehem (Nablus) and Jerusalem. This was written by Caroline Glick and it appeared in the Jerusalem Post May 29, 2006. |
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Fresh from her tete-a-tete with PA leader Mahmoud Abbas last week, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni instructed her press flack to tell her fellow cabinet ministers to remain mum on Abbas's latest "diplomatic" gambit. In the words of her communications director Shai Ben Maor, Abbas's decision to turn a document written by convicted Palestinian murderers and attempted murderers sitting in Israeli prisons into the centerpiece of his diplomatic policy is "an internal Palestinian issue" and so Israel should not be weighing in on it. What is the context of Abbas's new initiative regarding which Israel is supposed to have no official position? After receiving the Bush Administration's full-throated endorsement during Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's visit to Washington, DC last week, Abbas sprang into action. Following Bush's characterization of Abbas as a man who "favors and speaks for peace and negotiations," Abbas - who has never lifted a finger and indeed pledged never to lift a finger to fight Hamas, Fatah or any other terrorist organization - announced that he has a new plan. Abbas's plan has two central components. First, he wants to get the PA's Hamas government to accept the document authored by convicted murderers and attempted murderers. Second, Abbas wants Israel to allow him to raise, arm and field a new militia with 10,000 soldiers to supplement the 20,000 soldiers Abbas already hired in the lead-up to the Palestinian elections in January. Both the Israeli and the international media have referred to the convicted terrorists' declaration as a "peace plan." London's Daily Telegraph's summation of what its editors considered the main points of the declaration represents more or less what all the mass media organs in Israel and abroad have been saying. The Telegraph's report claims that the plan has six main components. In its words, those components are: "A negotiated settlement with Israel if the Jewish state withdraws from land occupied since the 1967 Middle East war; continued resistance, focusing on peaceful means, on land occupied since 1967 -- the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem; an independent Palestinian state on all land occupied since 1967, with Jerusalem as its capital; a unity Palestinian government uniting all factions, including Hamas and Fatah; guarantee the right of return of Palestinian refugees to their former homes inside Israel and the release of all Palestinian prisoners in Israel; speeding up efforts to incorporate Hamas and Islamic Jihad into the umbrella Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which has negotiated past interim peace accords." IF ONE were to take these terms at face value, perhaps this could be seen as a step forward. But just the barest scrutiny shows that what the jailed terrorists announced was nothing more than a new restatement of their declaration of war against Israel and a recommitment to their goal of destroying the Jewish State. It is true that the document speaks specifically of Israel's retreat from Judea and Samaria as well as Jerusalem. Yet led by convicted mass murderer, Fatah head and darling of the Israeli Left, Marwan Barghouti, the terrorists reiterated the "liberation of the land," that is, all of Israel, as their real objective. The Telegraph's assertion that the "resistance" to Israel is supposed to be largely by "peaceful means" leads a reader to assume this means that the terrorists are calling for an end to terrorism. Nothing could be further from the truth. In six separate clauses of the declaration, the terrorists make clear their continued commitment to carrying out acts of terrorism against Israel as part of their strategy for destroying the Jewish state. Those acts of terrorism are supposed to be conducted in conjunction with civil disturbances, negotiations with Israel run by Abbas (something that Iran and its client the Palestinian Islamic Jihad does not accept), as well as an international diplomatic campaign in cooperation with NGO allies intended to delegitimize and demonize Israel. Far from calling for an end to terrorism, the terrorists called for the establishment of a new joint terrorist organization called the "Popular Resistance Front" that is to be composed of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah terrorists. As they put it in their declaration, this new group's job will be "to lead and engage in resistance against the occupation and to unify and coordinate action and resistance and to form a unified political reference for the front." It is unclear what the difference will be between this proposed terrorist organization and the Popular Resistance Committees that Barghouti and his Hamas and Islamic Jihad colleagues formed in the months that preceded the outbreak of their terror war in September 2000. The Telegraph notes that the imprisoned terrorists insist that Israel accept the so-called "right of return" of the so-called "refugees," but the newspaper, like its Israeli media counterparts, fails to recognize the true significance of this repeated demand. These murderers are demanding that in exchange for a temporary cessation of terror attacks against its citizens, Israel agree to its national destruction. The so-called "right of return" is a demand that Israel accept the unimpeded immigration of millions of hostile, foreign- born Arabs to its sovereign territory. THESE MURDERERS devote an inordinate amount of attention in their declaration to detailing their desire to incorporate Hamas and Islamic Jihad into the Abbas-led PLO. They repeatedly call for unity between the "nationalist and Islamic" factions. That is, they call for unity in their ranks for the purpose of advancing their war for the destruction of Israel. Finally, in a decidedly self-serving fashion, the convicted murderers emphatically call for their own release from Israeli jails and see their release as "a sacred national duty." In short, much as one would expect, convicted Palestinian mass murderers from various terrorist organizations met in an Israeli prison yard to recommit themselves and their followers to their war for the destruction of Israel. And, much as one would expect, the international and Israeli press presented this declaration of war as a peace plan. ABBAS TOOK the media by storm with his bold declaration last Thursday that if Hamas does not accept the prisoners' declaration within 10 days he will bring it before the Palestinian public as a referendum. "What a bold effort!" the press exclaimed excitedly. Buoyed by his success, Abbas announced the second half of his plan. In order to ensure Hamas realizes that he means business, Abbas renewed his demand that Israel allow him to receive arms and ammunition for his loyal troops. He further announced his intention to increase the size of his current personal army -- Force 17 -- from 2,500-3,000 men to 10,000 men. There is very little new in the convicted terrorists' declaration or in Abbas's embrace of their declaration. Abbas has been embracing declarations of war against Israel since he joined Fatah as Yasser Arafat's deputy in 1959. There is also nothing new about Abbas's demand that Israel either supply him with arms or enable others to supply him with arms even though such arms and ammunition have been directly involved in the murder of scores of Israeli citizens since 1996. What is new is the response of Israel's government. Since 2000, the government has refused Palestinian requests for guns and ammunition. Yet, last week, Olmert's government allowed Abbas to receive arms and ammunition for Force 17 from Jordan and Egypt. Not only did the government allow forces committed to Israel's destruction to receive arms and ammunition, well placed sources claim that Defense Minister Amir Peretz's office was the source of the misinformation campaign that has dubbed the prisoners' declaration of war a peace plan. In misleading Israel's citizenry about the content of the murderers' war declaration and in enabling the rearmament and quadrupling of the size of Abbas's personal army, the Israeli government and the Israeli and international media have also been egged on by the Bush Administration. US military envoy to the Hamas-led PA, General Keith Dayton has reportedly been a major supporter of Peretz's desire to arm Abbas's men. The Americans have been pushing to have this militia deployed in northern Gaza where its members will purportedly stop Kassam missiles from being fired at Israel even though Abbas, their commander has adopted a plan that calls for continued attacks against Israel. It is hard to find polite words to describe an Israeli government that embraces enthusiastically a declaration of war against its country and enables its enemy to arm and field armies that have been trained to kill its citizens. It is hard not to view US support for the so-called "peace plan" as a repudiation of the Bush Doctrine. Contact Evelyn Hayes at haze@rcn.com |
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TERRORIST MURDERERS CAUGHT, 9.5 YEARS LATER
Posted by Hillel Fendel, June 7, 2006. |
The IDF arrested 14 wanted terror suspects over the night -- including the murderers of Ita Tzur and her son Ephraim nearly ten years ago. Husband and father Beit El resident Yoel Tzur was on his way home with his wife and most of their eight children one December night, Chanukah 1996, when the shots rang out that forever affected his life. The former commander of the regional IDF reserves division and long-time managing director of Arutz-7 recalled today the events of that night: "We were happily on our way home to light Chanukah candles, and we were about a kilometer away from Beit El on the [now closed-to-Jews] Dolev-Beit El route, when we saw the oncoming car of one of our neighbors in Beit El. The terrorists were waiting on the side in their car, and apparently figured that since she was alone, it wasn't worth their while to shoot at her. They then saw us coming from the other direction, blocked us off, and began shooting from just 2-3 meters away. They just pounded us with bullet fire." The car absorbed some 50 bullets, and everyone in the car was hit. "Our son Ephraim, then 12, died on the spot, and Ita was hit with a barrage of bullets..." Both Yoel and his dying wife showed amazing presence of mind. Yoel started running towards Beit El for help, and had a passing Arab driver take him there. At the same time, Ita was able to call via two-way radio to the Arutz-7 ship broadcasting offshore. Within seconds, the Arutz-7 broadcast was interrupted with a call for "anyone who can help or get help to the Surda intersection, where there has just been a terrorist shooting, please do so immediately." Beit El's Dr. Mati Erlichman heard the call and was able to provide emergency help before the family was rushed to the hospital. Ita died of her wounds two hours later on the operating table, while the others quickly recovered from their physical wounds. Thousands of people attended the double funeral in Beit El the next day, including then-Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Ariel Sharon (Infrastructures Minister), Yitzchak Mordechai (Defense Minister), David Levy (Foreign Minister), the since-deceased Education Minister Zevulun Hammer, the Chief Rabbis of Israel, numerous Knesset members, rabbis and other public figures. The two murderers and their driver were caught within days by the Palestinian Authority, partially with the help of Yoel Tzur's ability to identify them. They were immediately tried, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment at hard labor. Israel announced that it would still seek their extradition. Within 2-3 years, Tzur said today, "the murderers had either escaped or been let out, however you want to put it, and were roaming around in this very area. The army has consistently tried to find them. I know that three months ago, we were on the verge of finding them, but at the last second they managed to escape. This morning at 3:00 I was awoken to learn the happy news that they had finally been caught." Asked if he would rather they had been killed instead of arrested, he said, "I always told the army people with whom I spoke that they should kill them, if they could. But it's not always possible; the terrorists didn't open fire first, etc. ... Even though there's now a chance that they'll be released in some sort of prisoner exchange, as has happened before, still, we are very happy that they have been caught." During the funeral and the week of mourning afterwards, Yoel called upon the government to immediately respond to the murders by either building a new neighborhood of 1,000 housing units on Mt. Artis in Beit El, or relocating the nearby army basis to Artis and building a new neighborhood in its stead. The now flourishing neighborhoods of Maoz Tzur and Ginot Beit El were later built on part of the army base, with close to 100 families. The terrorists were arrested over night in their homes in Ramallah in a joint IDF-General Security Service operation. Tzur said the details are still not being publicized, though it is known that loaded guns, a magazine and a knife were found in their home. In another Israeli military operation this morning, a joint IDF/police force killed two wanted Islamic Jihad terrorists. They were suspected of planning a large-scale attack in the coming days, and a large explosive was in fact found in the house. The force originally surrounded the house in which four terrorists were hiding, and at one point, the terrorists burst out while firing on the Israeli force. The soldiers returned fire, killing two and seriously wounding another, and the fourth gave himself up.
Hillel Fendel is Senior News Editor for Israel National News.
This news item appeared today in Arutz-Sheva (www.IsraelNN.com).
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HELP THE BIKE FUND
Posted by Lee Caplan, June 7, 2006. |
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If you haven't yet participated in this wonderful project, please consider doing so. For only $40, a child from Gush Katif can have his/her own bike and helmet. What a beautiful way to help a beautiful child who has gone through so much. Tizku lemitzvos. Lee |
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Ernest Gelb (ernestgelb@sbcglobal.net) wrote: The excitement is high among the kids about the bike-a-thon. Already a group of cyclists in Beit Shemesh have offered to cycle with the kids in Nitzan. One of the cyclists is one of the best in the country. The group also invited kids to join them in Beith Shemesh for a bike-a-thon there on July 21st. The deputy mayor of Beit Shemesh has offered to pay for three busses.The hills of Beit Shemesh are lovely. and it is hoped that one day Beit Shemesh will become the cycling capital of Eretz Yisroel. We feel these are just the opportunities to help take the kids out of their personal as well as group isolation and get them forward moving. One new community, Amatzia, which has more than 250 children, is in the Lachish area and is really isolated. It is 30 minutes to Beit Shemesh, Our hope is to get 100 bikes for this group alone. They have no recreational package and the bikes will make a big difference. Again we (social workers, youth coordinators et all ) see the bikes has a real way to give them the recreational and therapeutic benefits and well as the much needed social benefits. Biking could really become the "sport" of the South, with organized cycling clubs and bike-a-thons, 100 bikes cost $10,000. ( that is factored in with the additional 550 bikes we urgently need), If you know anyone who might be willing to do a share of these bikes for the Torani Katif people who now in in isolated Amatzia, I'll be glad to contact them with further information..They are exceptionally modest and undemanding..many were in Chinuch -- some were in agriculture. Esti, my Israeli coordinator,often speaks of her son Yosef's four wonderful years learning in the Katif Yeshiva with the finest of rabbaim. Always warm and hospitable and inspirational by virtue of their beautiful middot, they could dearly use our support now. What I am doing with one of the local shuls here...I asked the rabbi if I might speak with some of his people to raise either $1,000 or $1,800 from some of his members and then list the sponsorship of his shul (Chabad) on the sponsorship card on the program at the bike-a-thon. He was delighted. So far, I find people very receptive to the idea..some buy a bike,,,some buy one or two or three...
A gala bike-a-thon is scheduled to take place in Nitzan, the largest temporary community for former Gush Katif residents on July 11th. It is the FIRST -- and very exciting event to take place in their new surroundings. Hundred of Gush Katif kids will be participating. All will be invited. Approximately 600 bikes have been delivered to the children. Several hundred more are needed by the middle of June to enable the youth to participate in this landmark event. Excitement is already in the air! The theme of the bike-a-thon is ROAD SAFETY. Entertainment, drinks, tee shirts, medallions, and more... promise to add to the festivities. It is a wonderful opportunity to help restore a sense of unity and hope and going forward. Sponsors, individuals and organizations, will be listed on the program. Sponsorship is $1,000 or more. $1,000 supplies ten bikes which are well suited for longevity and rural terrain along with ten helmets, European regulated.. All are purchased at cost and delivered by caring volunteers. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Gush Katif Bike Fund was established to provide the children with bikes, with all their magical therapeutic and recreational benefits. The Gift of a Bike is a Gift For Life". For the Katif Kids the bike has become a special symbol of the friendship and caring of the people of Am Yisroel. We invite you to join in this great opportunity to bring real joy to these wonderful kids. TODAH RABAH!! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A full sized bike including helmet..........$100.00 A small bike imported bike including helmet...$40.00 Your tax deductible check can be made out to:THE CENTRAL FUND OF ISRAEL and it is important to earmark it THE GUSH KATIF BIKE FUND Please mail to:The Central Fund of Israel c/o Marcus -- Attn. Arthur Marcus, 980 Sixth Avenue, New York, NY 10018 In Israel:The Central Fund of Israel,c/o Jay Marcus, Rechov Hagoel 13, Efrat, Israel 90435 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ For further information: in Israel Esti Ben Naim at 02-6536-536 or
bnmoshe@netvision.net.il In the USA: Sally Gelb at 1-860-233-4239 or
ernestgelb@sbcglobal.net
Contact Lee Caplan at leescaplan@yahoo.com
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WASHINGTON'S FAILED WAR IN AFGHANISTAN
Posted by Elan Journo, June 7, 2006. |
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Unlike the seemingly endless war in Iraq, America's campaign in Afghanistan is widely considered a success in the "war on terror." We have nothing more to fear from Afghanistan, our policy makers tell us, because the war accomplished its two main goals: al Qaeda and its sponsoring regime, the Taliban, are long gone, and the country has a new, pro-Western government. But as the daily news from Afghanistan shows, in reality the war has been a drastic failure. Legions of undefeated Taliban and al Qaeda soldiers have renewed their jihad. Flush with money, amassing recruits, and armed with guns, rockets and explosives, they are fighting to regain power. In recent months they have mounted a string of suicide bombings and rocket attacks against American and NATO forces; more U.S. troops have died in Afghanistan in the last 18 months than did during the peak of the war. Taliban forces have effectively besieged several provinces in southern Afghanistan. Local officials estimate that in some provinces the "number of Taliban ... is several times more than that of the police and Afghan National Army." Taliban fighters are said to amble through villages fearlessly, brandishing their Kalashnikovs, and collecting zakat (an Islamic tithe) from peasants. With astounding boldness, they have assassinated clerics and judges deemed too friendly to the new government, and fired rockets at a school for using "un-Islamic" books. How is it that four years after the war began--and in the face of America's unsurpassed military strength--Taliban and al Qaeda fighters are once again threatening American interests? Victory in Afghanistan demanded two things. We had to destroy the Taliban and we had to ensure that a non-threatening, non-Islamic-warrior-breeding regime take its place. But we did not think we had a moral right to do either. Our military was ordered to pursue Taliban fighters only if it simultaneously showed "compassion" to the Afghans. The U.S. military dropped bombs on Afghanistan--but instead of ruthlessly pounding key targets, it was ordered to gingerly avoid hitting holy shrines and mosques (known to be Taliban hideouts) and to shower the country with food packages. The U.S. deployed ground forces--but instead of focusing exclusively on capturing or killing the enemy, they were also diverted to a host of "reconstruction" projects. The result is that the enemy was not destroyed and crushed in spirit, but merely scattered and left with the moral fortitude to regroup and launch a brazen comeback. Even with its hands tied, however, the U.S. military succeeded in toppling the Taliban regime--but Washington subverted that achievement, too. A new Afghan government would be a non-threat to America's interests if it were based on a secular constitution that respects individual rights. The Bush administration, however, declared that we had no right to "impose our beliefs" on the Afghans--and instead endorsed their desire for another regime founded on Islamic law. Already this avowedly Islamic regime has jailed an Afghan magazine editor for "blasphemy"; recently, Abdul Rahman, an Afghan convert to Christianity, faced a death sentence for apostasy. The new Afghan regime cannot be counted on to oppose the resurgence of Islamic totalitarianism. Ideologically, it has nothing to say in opposition to the doctrines of the Taliban (two members of the Taliban leadership are in the new government). It is only a matter of time before Afghanistan is once again a haven for anti-American warriors. The failure in Afghanistan is a result of Washington's foreign policy. Despite lip-service to the goal of protecting America's safety, the "war on terror" has been waged in compliance with the prevailing moral premise that self-interest is evil and self-sacrifice a virtue. Instead of trouncing the enemy for the sake of protecting American lives, our leaders have sacrificed our self-defense for the sake of serving the whims of Afghans. The half-hearted war in Afghanistan failed to smash the Taliban and al Qaeda. It failed to render their ideology--Islamic totalitarianism--a lost cause. Instead, at best it demonstrated Washington's reluctance to fight ruthlessly to defend Americans. How better to stoke the enthusiasm of jihadists? America cannot win this or any war by embracing selflessness as a virtue. Ultimately, it cannot survive unless Washington abandons its self-sacrificial foreign policy in favor of one that proudly places America's interests as its exclusive moral concern. Elan Journo is a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand--author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead." Contact the Institute at media@aynrand.org |
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BURKA DOESN'T LOOK LIKE FREEDOM
Posted by Mrla 26, June 7, 2006. |
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This was written by Danielle Smith for the Calgary Herald. Contact her at danielle@apri.ca |
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For me, the most memorable image from this weekend's terrorism bust was not the sight of 17 Muslim men being arrested and the revelation of their plans to blow up Canadian targets. It was the sight their family members outside the Brampton Ont. courtroom: a group of women dressed in a head-to-toe burkas, one of them drinking a Tim Hortons coffee. How were homegrown terrorists raised on Canadian soil? This image, to me, says it all. I have no doubt many Muslim women voluntarily choose to wear a head scarf to satisfy the tenets of modesty in their faith. But the burka, which completely covers a woman, including her face, and leaves only a tiny slit for her eyes, is not about modesty. In the extreme views of extreme Islamists, even the sight of a bare ankle can be enough to drive a man wild with lust, which is why they believe women must be completely covered. It is oppression and it should not be happening in Canada. If young men are being brought up in households where women dress in burkas, it does not surprise me they would grow up to be extremists. Here, young women are constantly seen with bare heads, shoulders and legs. Magazine racks, cinemas and movie stores prominently display beautiful models and actresses in suggestive poses. If a man believes women should never show any skin in public, there would be cause for fresh outrage every time he leaves his house. Canada must now face the same questions other western countries have grappled with. This nation offers a haven for the oppressed to start a new life and live freely. Yet, what do we do when groups continue the oppression of their homelands under the guise of religious freedom? Are these burka-clad women free? I don't think so. The Italians have gone so far as to enact anti-terror laws that forbid individuals from hiding their faces in public. Seeing these women with their faces uncovered would be far less disturbing. But what is more troubling is the attitude their clothing represents. In her book The Rage and the Pride, Italian author Oriana Fallaci issues a scorching indictment of the growing Muslim extremism in her country, with good reason. She experienced the misogyny of extreme Islam first-hand. As a reporter in the Middle East in 1973, she was with a unit of Palestinian fedayins at a secret base when an Israeli air raid began. While the men ran for cover in a mountain cave, she was told she couldn't hole up with them because it would be "obscene." They put her in an isolated wooden hut instead -- when she lit her lighter to see where she'd been placed, she discovered she was surrounded by boxes of explosives. "They did it on purpose, to amuse themselves, as if my risk of blowing up for a nearby blast would be the most hilarious thing on earth." More to the point, she discusses a Taliban-era documentary by a London-based journalist which shows the execution of three women in burkas in a square in Kabul. Their bearded, turbaned executioner walks behind the three kneeling women, lazily scratching his genitals as he goes along and, one-by-one, shoots them in the nape of the neck. In a final act of defiance, one of the victims lifts her robe to show a bare leg before she falls dead. Why were these women murdered? The next scene of the documentary shows a group of women in "one of the most prohibited places of the city." The women have unveiled faces, low-cut dresses and laugh while they curl their hair, put on makeup and apply red nail polish. The three women had been executed because they went to a hair salon. I have read stories which suggest life in Afghanistan, even after the removal of the Taliban, remains depressingly backward. A young, female Afghan VJ was forced off the air by the mullahs under threat of death; a 17-year-old teenager was killed by her brother because he had not given his permission for her to date; foreign female reporters have been beaten for not abiding by local dress codes. What really burns me is the burka was widely seen to be a symbol of repression, and went a long way to build public support for the Canadian mission. It makes little sense for our soldiers to be putting their lives on the line to bring liberation to Afghanistan when we can't even guarantee such freedom here. Contact Mrla 26 at @mrla26@aol.com |
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POLLARD URGES ATTENDANCE AT UPCOMING MATAR TRIAL
Posted by Justice For Jonathan Pollard, June 10, 2006. |
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Jonathan Pollard views the upcoming trial THE STATE OF ISRAEL vs. NADIA MATAR as a test for all of The House of Israel. According to Pollard: "Nadia Matar represents the voice of legitimate dissent in Israel. If she is silenced through intimidation and harassment, any pretense that the State of Israel is a democracy is unequivocally dispelled....The imprisonment of a nation begins with the unjust incarceration of one citizen. As Israeli citizens, our right to live freely in the Land and our freedom of speech depend on how we as a nation respond to the Government's unwarranted persecution of any one citizen..." (See full text of Pollard's remarks below)* WHAT: A Trial: THE STATE OF ISRAEL vs NADIA MATAR WHEN: Begins on Wednesday 14 June 2006 TIME: 10:00 AM WHERE: Beit Mishpat HaShalom (The Shalom Court) in Jerusalem Near the Russian Compound. A short walk up Helene HaMalka Street and to the right. Please be there! |
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This is called "The Case Against Nadia Matar" written by Jonathan Pollard at FCI Butner, NC. It was originally published October 24, 2004. Legitimate Dissent Is Not A Crime Nadia Matar, leader of Women for Israel's Tomorrow, is being persecuted by the Government of Israel for being a good Jew. Nadia did not foment a rebellion. She did not incite the People of Israel to revolt. Neither did she call for insurrection or political subversion. She did not commit any crime. All that Nadia Matar did was to call upon a fellow Jew to do tshuva, to give up his involvement in an immoral enterprise and return to the appropriate path for a G-d fearing Jew. Nadia did so in the finest tradition of our holy Prophets. Our Prophets' powerful messages exhorting errant Kings to desist from "doing evil in the eyes of G-d" and to return to the correct path is an important part of our history, and an integral part of our national consciousness. Calling upon a public figure to do tshuva was not a crime then and it is not a crime now. Nadia and I wrote separate but like-minded open letters to Yonatan Bassi, head of the Disengagement Authority. We both called upon Bassi to give up his immoral position as head of the Authority and implored him not to become the chief liquidator of Jewish homes and communities in Israel. It is ironic: Nadia is now being interrogated, threatened with indictment, and intimidated by the possibility of unlimited administrative detention for writing her letter to Bassi. I, on the other hand, sitting here in an American prison, have suffered no repercussions. My right to freedom of speech is guaranteed. Nadia's is not. My wife and I make many sacrifices in order to make my voice heard outside of prison walls. We endure the hardship because Esther and I are determined never to give up the one freedom I do have. Even as a prisoner in America, I have the right to freedom of speech. As long as I refrain from discussing classified information, I am free to express my thoughts, opinions and ideas. Nadia and our fellow countrymen on the right side of the political spectrum, are not. Why Do They Want To Silence Nadia Matar? What is it that the government and security establishment see in Nadia Matar which makes them fear her so? Why are the authorities so determined to silence her? It is not because of anything she has done. It is because of what she represents. Nadia is the head of one of the most effective citizens' advocacy groups in Israel. She is among a handful of natural leaders today, who have the will, the talent, and the strength of character to galvanize popular protest against undemocratic actions by the current Government of Israel. Nadia represents everything a repressive regime fears in its citizenry. Her idealism and her enthusiasm are infectious and her determination is unyielding. She is a G-d fearing woman and a fierce nationalist, not easily threatened or intimidated. She is a thinker and resists following blindly. What is more, she is a powerful model and source of inspiration for others. In short, she is everything a dictatorial regime cannot tolerate if it is to retain complete and unquestioning control over its citizens. Desperate to curtail Nadia's activities as a leader of one the most effective protest movements in the country, the Government seized upon her letter to Bassi as an excuse to take action against her. She was quickly hauled in for police interrogation and grilled for hours on end. Eager to charge her with a crime -- any crime -- the authorities zeroed in on one part of her letter to Bassi. Nadia referenced a letter that Bassi had sent to citizens of Gaza urging them to cooperate with their own expulsion, and she compared it to a similar letter by the Judenrat during W.W. II urging Jews to cooperate and go quietly to the trains (which would take them to the death camps). Nadia wrote that Bassi's letter was worse than the Judenrat's since the Judenrat had no choice, whereas Bassi had accepted the immoral task of expelling Jews from their homes of his own free will. The Israeli authorities decided that there must be a way to criminalize the insult of comparing Bassi's letter to the Judenrat's. Searching the law books, they came up with a law -- totally unrelated and absolutely irrelevant -- under which to prosecute Nadia. The law they invoked -- insulting a public official in the course of his official duties -- was designed to protect policemen, firemen and other public servants from being abused in the course of their work. For example, this law protects a traffic policeman from being verbally abused by a person who has just received a traffic ticket. In their zeal to incriminate Nadia, the Government reinterpreted the law, stretching its application far beyond its intended purpose. Why? Because even if they cannot make a case against Nadia, the public furor that they have created over this incident will make it easy to take other actions to silence her. For example, administrative detention is a far greater threat hanging over Nadia's head than any judicial proceeding that the Government may take against her. The Threat Of Administrative Detention It is more than possible that the Government plans to use its twisted interpretation of the "insult to public officials law" in a way reminiscent of America's infamous Internal Security Act of 1950. That law not only limited citizens' freedom of speech and freedom of association, but also permitted the President to lock up potential subversives indefinitely in concentration camps during times of perceived national emergency. Fortunately, there was a public outcry and this law was never implemented in the US. However, the immoral use of administrative detention, without formal indictment and with no possibility of judicial review, still exists in Israel and it is routinely utilized. If the Government does indict Nadia, it can still lock her up in administrative detention before she is brought to trial. In other words, she can be placed inadministrative detention indefinitely pending a trial -- a trial which may be deliberately delayed for months, weeks, or even years. Even worse, if the Government refrains from indicting Nadia, it can still lock her up in administrative detention indefinitely, without judicial review. Any attempt by the Government to place Nadia in administrative detention must be met with unlimited and overwhelming public protest. If the Government of Israel is permitted to lock up Nadia Matar before,during or after trial, on trumped up charges of insulting a public official, the country is headed for the kind of judicial authoritarianism that Senator McCarthy attempted to unleash in the US.This poses an immeasurable threat to all of Israel, including the cancellation of freedom of speech and the abrogation of Israeli civil rights. When Freedom Of Speech Is A Crime According to the law, freedom of speech ends where its exercise threatens the public good. Shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theatre is a crime. But this is only true if there is no fire! If there is a fire, it is unforgivable not to cry out. For those of us, like Nadia, who cherish Israel and seek to protect and defend the Land, it is glaringly obvious that the House of Israel is on fire. The flames are threatening to engulf us all! Now, more than ever, Jewish lives are at risk, and Jewish homes and communities are in mortal danger. Every day the enemy grows bolder and bolder in its attacks upon a beleaguered civilian population. The Government not only allows the flames to rage out of control but is also feeding the fire by offering up chunks of our homeland to our sworn enemies. By orchestrating a very public campaign of intimidation against Nadia Matar -- who dared to cry "Fire!" -- the Government is attemptingto silence all dissention. It is using a pinpoint precision attack on Nadia to intimidate the entire nationalist camp. As it demonstrates its willingness and its ability to crush this popular leader, the Government is sending a strong message to all. It apparently believes that in this way it will succeed in breaking the back of the citizens' protest movements which bitterly oppose the Government's plan to uproot Jewish homes and communities in Gaza and Samaria and turn the land overto our enemies. Destroying The Foundations Of Democracy The Government is mistaken in its aims and in its calculations.All that it has accomplished is to destroy its own legitimacy and its right to govern. In democratic states, a government derives its power from the consent of the people. A government cannot replace consent with coercion and still be considered a democracy. Nadia Matar represents the voice of legitimate dissent in Israel. If she is silenced through intimidation and harassment, any pretense that the State of Israel is a democracy is unequivocally dispelled. Every distinction between Israel and her non-democratic neighbors in the region is effectively blurred. Moreover by relentlessly persecuting those who exercise free speech to express legitimate dissent, the Government is deliberately creating an atmosphere of fear and repression -- the kind of atmospheret hat invites rebellion. Thus, by taking Draconian action against selected individuals, such as Nadia, the Government is actually fomenting the very insurrection it claims it is trying to prevent; and which it will use to justify the use of even more repressive and dictatorial measures. The imprisonment of a nation begins with the unjust incarceration of one citizen. As Israeli citizens, our right to live freely in the Land and our freedom of speech depend on how we as a nation respond to the Government's unwarranted persecution of any one citizen. By going after Nadia Matar publicly, interrogating and harassing her; threatening her with indictment and arrest; holding the specter of administrative detention over her head, the Government is effectively threatening all of us. It is striking out at the heart of all that Jews hold dear: our right to live and act in harmony with G-d and Torah; our right to be a free People in our own Land; and ou rfundamental right to freedom of speech. All of The House of Israel must unite to vigorously protect and defend Nadia Matar; to prevent the Government from singling her out for malicious persecution. We must fight this injustice as if our very existence were at stake. As G-d fearing Jews who love the Land, it is. Contact Justice For Jonathan Pollard by email at Justice4JP@aol.com and visit Pollard's website: http://www.jonathanpollard.org |
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ARAB TYRANTS DON'T LEARN; IRAN FREE TO BUILD A-BOMBS
Posted by Richard H. Shulman, June 7, 2006. |
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OLMERT REGIME MOTTO: "TO THE SEA"? The Arabs want to drive the Jews into the sea. Arafat planned to do it in phases. His first phase was to get the Jews out of the Territories. With that first phase, many Israeli leaders concur. Olmert is implementing Phase I. He is driving Jews towards the sea. Squeezed along the coast, they would be more easily subjected to Phase II. FROM SMALL BEGINNINGS Hamas formed an ancillary police force of only 3,000. Seems too few to threaten the regular police, who need help. Not up to the job? P.A. police act more like mob enforcers than law enforcers. Now the Hamas Minister wants to expand that ancillary force. It is becoming a threat. I used to mock fears of certain programs being likely to become "a step towards socialism." I was wrong. Besides, I was a socialist, then. People adjust to the first step, and take another. Therefore, the proper criteria are whether the first step, in itself, is constructive, and whether it seems likely to lead to further steps that are destructive. ARAB TYRANTS DON'T LEARN It's an old story freshly lived. Arab tyrants treat Islamists inconsistently. Regimes crack down on the seditious fanatics. Then they offer amnesty in exchange for promises to work within the system. But an Arab promise is good only as long as the other side can enforce it. Quietly the Islamists build a following. Then the regime finds it difficult to tamp down their resurgence. This is the pattern, repeated in each of several countries. The PLO is Islamist. It shares Hamas' goal of Islamic hegemony, but is more sophisticated in duplicity, as by feigning compromise, to gain concessions. Arafat coordinated policy with the Muslim Brotherhood, so that it would not assassinate him. Abu Mazen likewise refused to crack down on Hamas, dreading to launch what would become a civil war, for his main enemy is Israel (as if the West doesn't know). Now, however, Hamas is gunning for him. Al Qaida claims responsibility for assassination attempts against a couple of his security chiefs. Point is, will he wait for them to get him, or will he launch his restive militiamen against them? An Arab dictator would be wise to crack down on the Islamists and keep them down. That means not letting them run mosques, madrassas, and charitable social institutions, in which they win allegiance and adherents. If a regime is going to close Islamist schools and clinics, and not be hated, it had better provide those services, itself. Arafat didn't, because he preferred to steal the needed funds and he had time only for jihad. He was not interested in building up a state. STATESMANLIKE BUT WRONG Iran warned Europe that it is within range of Iran's missiles. Europe knows that in time, unless stopped, those missiles would carry nuclear weapons. Like the good friend that the US is to that ungrateful Europe, Pres. Bush offered Europe an anti-missile defense system. It was the decent thing to do, but unwise. It takes some pressure off Europe to promote sanctions against Iran and get Iran to stand down its nuclear arms development. Pres. Bush was statesmanlike but wrong or at least premature. GETTING AWAY WITH BEING DISINGENUOUS Democrats call Pres. Bush a liar and his administration secretive. A recurrent example of bad faith is his abuse of the waivers on legislation that withhold aid and recognition from the Palestinian Authority if it promotes terrorism. It does promote terrorism. Nevertheless, Pres. Bush and his predecessor routinely have exercised waivers, claiming without substantiation that it is in the national interest (to aid those anti-American terrorists). He doesn't explain now nor define "national interest." Congress drafted a new bill that would have only a minimal waiver. The President opposes it on the grounds that it would bind his diplomatic maneuverability. That is half the truth. He also opposes it because it conflicts with his appeasement of the Arabs and with the State Dept. plan to whittle Israel down in favor of the Arabs. Congress, however, does not call him to account on that dissembling answer. Not even the partisan Democrats in it, do. The incumbent and his predecessor even exercised a waiver that doesn't apply, in order to favor the PLO over Israel. The law required the State Dept. to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv, which is not the capital of Israel, to Jerusalem, which is. The law has other provisions to which a waiver is applicable, but no waiver is available to this provision. Nevertheless, the Presidents exercised a "waiver" on this provision. They were not held to account for that, either, though it was not just in bad faith but also illegal. The Presidents do not recognize Israel as the capital of Israel. Those Israelis who count upon the US as a friend of Israel ought to reexamine their assumptions. And Democrats ought to stop acting as if only this, Republican administration were deceitful. IRAN'S CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS The head of the Iranian regime, hated by the masses it oppresses and impoverishes, told Pres. Bush that Western democracy has failed to realize humanity's ideals. Actually, Islamic states almost everywhere produce bigotry, strife, insecurity, fascism, and poverty. Some of them are what now are called "failed states." Others barely hold together, by force. In a few, the ruling classes have bribed the masses, but discontent is rising. IRAN FREE TO BUILD A-BOMBS An Israeli Cabinet Minister concluded that Iran is free to build nuclear weapons. First, Pres. Bush is too weak politically, to act firmly. Second, Israel cannot act without US permission, for the same reason not likely to be granted. The US controls access to Iran, because of its bases in the region. Cabinet Member Rafi Eitan, when in the intelligence service, spied on a PLO meeting early in Oslo. Arafat disclosed his strategy as building multiple military forces, to eventually drive Israel into the sea. IMRA asks why the government didn't act on that information (IMRA, 5/20) instead of going along with Arafat's pretense of making peace. The Sharon-Olmert withdrawals are bringing Israelis closer to the sea. Bush is weak politically. His ineptitude in waging war and reluctance to campaign for it consistently and coherently enabled his polarized political opposition to condemn him unfairly but plausibly. The Democrats bear responsibility for holding him back from dealing firmly with Iran. Remember that when Iran blows up an American city, if you are not in that city. How much will be made of the revelation by a world pretending that PLO man, Abbas would make peace, if Israel negotiated with him even though he lacks the power to? SENTENCING & PRISONS Jihad is barbaric war. The U.S. treated Moussaoui, the al-Qaida 9/11 defendant, not as a barbarian but as a felon. He used the trial to make propaganda! The Jury considered personal extenuating circumstances, as if there can be any for a holy warrior. The sentence was as long as Pollard's. Pollard is treated harshly; Moussaoui will fare worse. The difference between the two is that Moussaoui harmed the US by letting 3,000 be slain. Pollard did not harm the US at all, in alerting Israel to prevent thousands of its people from being slain by the likes of Moussaoui. Israel is more peculiar. It convicted a chief PLO terrorist leader, Barghouti, of multiple murders. But terrorist murders are not ordinary felony murders. Terrorists are a scourge. They merit death without trial except for those who do not resist arrest and for the others a court should verify their identity as terrorists. Prison time should be severe, though I think that solitary confinement, as Pollard endured for years, is too harsh except as temporary punishment for prisoner offenses. Barghouti has mild treatment. His quarters are comfortable. He continues to phone out plans for his terrorist movement, hold anti-Israel rallies and press interviews, and encourage war on Israel! Israel is foolish to allow that. He also anticipates being freed in one of Israel's counter-productive, lop-sided exchanges (IMRA, 5/20 from Sara Honig of Jerusalem Post). HOUSE DEMOLITION IN GAZA Doors are being blown open in Gaza and other damage done to housing there, but Israel is not doing it. The Arabs are doing it to themselves. Having explosives aplenty, the various factions seek to blow up their sleeping rivals. The tactic does not seem to be working (IMRA, 5/22) except for door sellers and sleep therapists, kept in business. Now that the Arabs are destroying each other, the humanitarian organizations have little to say about it. Only when Israel resists Arab aggression, do the humanitarian organizations anguish over harm to the aggressor people. Such NGOs could be designated the "League for Protection of Antisemites." NEGOTIATIONS The Abbas clique claims he is authorized to negotiate peace with Israel. He would put the results to a referendum. Is he too weak to negotiate responsibly, as Israel alleges? The reply was, "'We can not deny that there is no Palestinian crisis, but at the same time, the PM Ehud Olmert should not forget that there is Israeli occupation and continues its aggressions against the Palestinian people,' Ereikat said." "The weakness of the PNA is simply because the continued military aggression against its infrastructure." (IMRA, 5/22.) Abbas and other P.A. officials urge, but don't require, terrorists not to attack Israel now, not because it is criminal and violates the peace agreements, but because today it does not promote the Arab cause. That is not the sentiment of a man of peace. What might he urge, tomorrow? He explains that military resistance is a right, but invokes greater casualties for the Arabs, since Israel is stronger now (IMRA, 5/22.) In fact his internal propaganda, via TV, contradicts that statement, by praising terrorism. How could Israel expect negotiations in good faith from a leader who: (1) Falsely accuses Israel of occupation, aggression, and when the aggression and usurpation is by the Arabs; (2) Blames P.A. problems on Israel, when he and associates set up price-gouging monopolies; (3) His PLO extorts from business instead of establishing business law to encourage investment; (4) Steal foreign aid; (5) Breaks the existing peace agreement; (6) Has a religious code that authorizes deceit in negotiation; and (7) Has an ideology of conquest and teaches his people to hate and murder infidels? P.A. POPULATION PACKING? A poll taken in April found that a third of the population of the P.A. have been considering pulling out of the P.A., because of poor economic conditions. (What about the anarchy and oppression, not to mention the culture of bigotry and violence?) Most think the new prime minister has no economic plan (Arutz-7, 5/22). If the world does not rescue the P.A. financially, there would be an exodus. Terrorism would wane. Israel could reclaim more patrimony. The West would defeat that jihad. Richard Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. His comments and analyses appear often on Think-Israel. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at richardshulman5@aol.com. |
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PALESTINIAN SUPPORT 'CRASHES' IN EUROPE
Posted by Mordechai Ben-Menachem, June 7, 2006. |
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This article was written by David Horovitz; it appeared in the Jerusalem Post June 5, 2006. |
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New public opinion surveys conducted among "opinion elites" in Europe show that support for the Palestinians has fallen precipitously, according to a leading international pollster, Stan Greenberg, who has been briefing Israeli leaders on his findings in the past few days. There has not necessarily been "a rush to Israel" but there has been a "crash" in backing for the Palestinians, he noted. Greenberg, a key pollster for president Clinton who also worked with former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, conducted the surveys for the Israel Project, a US-based non-profit organization devoted to educating the press and the public about Israel. Greenberg told The Jerusalem Post that the shifts in attitudes reflected in the surveys were so dramatic that he "redid" some of the polls to ensure there had been no error. He singled out France as the country where attitudes had changed most dramatically. Three years ago, 60 percent of French respondents said they took a side in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and of that 60%, four out of five backed the Palestinians. Today, by contrast, 60% of French respondents did not take a side in the conflict, and support for the Palestinians had dropped by half among those who did express a preference. Greenberg said the figures were still being finalized, and so did not go into further details. But shifts such as these, he said, represented "an incredible pace of change," with significant consequences. Until recently, he said, "It was hard for Israel to communicate its interests in its own name" in Europe. "It was hard for Israel to be heard. Nowadays, it is heard on its own interests, such as Iran and Hamas." Much of the "old sense of hostility," had dissipated, he said. At the root of the change, said Greenberg, was a fundamental remaking in Europe of the "framework" through which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is viewed. Three years ago, he said, the conflict was perceived "in a post-colonial framework." There was a sense "that Europe could cancel out its own colonial history by taking the 'right' side" -- the Palestinian side. Yasser Arafat was viewed as "an anti-colonial, liberation leader." The US was seen as a global imperial power, added Greenberg, and the fact that it was backing Israel only added to the "instinctive" sense of the Palestinians as victims. France, with the largest Muslim population -- moreover an entirely Arab Muslim population -- with the direct experience of Algeria and the most anti-US positions, was most prey to this mindset. Today, by contrast, the Europeans "are focused on fundamentalist Islam and its impact on them," he said. The Europeans were now asking themselves "who is the moderate in this conflict, and who is the extremist? And suddenly it is the Palestinians who may be the extremists, or who are allied with extremists who threaten Europe's own society." An increasing proportion of Europeans are concluding that "maybe the Palestinians are not the colonialist victims" after all. Furthermore, the pollster said, the question of which side held "absolute," uncompromising positions had also shifted -- to Israel's benefit. The sea-change in attitudes, he said, had been accelerated by the fact that former prime minister Ariel Sharon, who had been widely regarded as an ideological "absolutist," had surprised Europe with his disengagement initiative. And at about the same time, the Palestinians had chosen the "absolutists" of Hamas as their leadership. An opinion poll for the Israel Project among "opinion elites" in the US released last month found that 80% believed that US should not fund the Palestinian Authority until its Hamas-led government renounced violence, recognized Israel and ended terrorism, 93% said Palestinian leaders must end the culture of hate that encourages children to become suicide bombers and 78% had a favorable view of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's "realignment" plan. Asked if they considered themselves supporters of Israel or supporters of the Palestinians, 58% in that survey said they backed Israel, while 10% said they supported the Palestinians. Another 33% said they supported neither side, were undecided or didn't know. Mordechai Ben-Menachem is at Ben-Gurion University. He can be reached by email at quality@computer.org |
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MUSLIMS SEEK A HAVEN IN ISRAEL AFTER THEIR EXODUS FROM DARFUR
Posted by Bryna Berch, June 6, 2006. |
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This was written by Yonit Farago and Stephen Farrell. It appeared today in Times Online (www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2212415,00.html) |
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IN 2000 Sanka, a 30-year-old Sudanese Muslim, fled his village in Darfur after the infamous Janjawid -- Arabs loyal to the Khartoum Government -- arrived on horseback with machineguns, killing his father and stealing camels and cattle. Sanka rode on a tobacco lorry to the town of Niala, where he waited in vain for his family. He then headed east, looking for work, but was rounded up and beaten by the Sudanese police. He scraped together the money for a one-way airfare to Egypt, and he spent the next four years drifting around Cairo and Aswan, until he was arrested in late 2004. Facing expulsion to Sudan, he bribed his way out of custody and took a bus to the Sinai Desert bordering Israel. He wandered lost for 24 hours, until he stumbled across the blue-and-white flag of an Israeli military border post. "I expected to get shot in the head. If that had happened I would have said to them, 'God bless you'. Everything was so hopeless for me," he told The Times yesterday. Sanka was not shot. The Israelis patched him up and held him for a month before attempting to send him back to Egypt. The Egyptians refused to take him. He spent a year in an Israeli prison before being sent to a kibbutz, while his fate was decided. "Sudan is the enemy of Israel. You are a citizen of that country, so we can't release you," a judge told him. Sanka -- not his real name -- is not alone in his extraordinary five-year odyssey from an Arab state to a Jewish one, and from a country in the grip of one genocide to a nation built on the ashes of another. He was merely a pioneer, and ever more Sudanese -- Muslims and Christians -- have followed in his footsteps, desperate to escape the conflicts in Darfur and southern Sudan that have cost more than two million lives. There are 220 Sudanese refugees being held in Israeli prison cells, army bases and remote kibbutzes. The Israeli Government believes that many more may have entered the country undetected, using Beduin smugglers to take them across the unfenced border. The influx has accelerated sharply since December. Technically the Sudanese are citizens of what Israel deems an enemy state and cannot stay. But their cause has been taken up by Holocaust campaigners and civil rights groups, who argue that Israel, of all countries, should give refuge to people fleeing genocide. "We cannot ignore refugees of the Darfur genocide when they knock on our door," Avner Shalev, the director of Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, said. He has written to Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, comparing their plight to Jews who in vain sought sanctuary from European countries during the Second World War. Indeed, their Sudanese passports are stamped "all countries except Israel", and they face execution if their Government learns that they have even visited the Zionist state. Civil rights groups have filed High Court petitions and cite on their letterheads the Biblical injunction: "You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt" (Exodus XXII, 20). They accuse the Government of violating international law prohibiting discrimination in asylum policies. Michael Bavly, representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Israel, said that the law should distinguish "between an enemy citizen who is a perpetrator and an enemy citizen who is a victim". Mark Regev, an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, said that there was no question of the Sudanese being sent back to a regime that could kill them. But Israel was not their first country of refuge, and the small Jewish state could not cope with a flood of asylum-seekers. "Israel has no desire to send these people back to the terrible place they came from," he said. "We are working with the UNHCR to try to find a humanitarian solution for these people. In the meantime ... we are trying to make the conditions of their stay in this country as pleasant as possible." As the debate rages, many of the Sudanese sit in the Maasiyahu prison or army bases. Others, such as Sanka, have been released to isolated kibbutzes, where they are free to work but their movements are restricted. Sanka whiles away the time working as a gardener and reading Great Expectations. "The Israeli Government should understand that we are not the people they should be afraid of," he said. "We are not the people who hate others because of their religion or race. But because of the way the Government of Sudan behaves, everything is about Islam." |
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ISRAEL'S PRIME MINISTER APOLOGIZES TO EGYPT ... WHY?
Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, June 6, 2006. |
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Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert apologizes to Egypt's President Mubarak for the killing of two Egyptian terrorists dressed in Egyptian uniforms. It was reported that Israeli officers were resentful of PM Olmert's craven apology. Surely, "resentful" was an understatement. It should be replaced with "furious". We all remember Chamberlain, Quisling and other betrayers of their nations. We have watched a veritable parade of Jewish leaders plead, genuflect, and wring their hands in front of our enemies in the hope that they would forgive us for being Jews. I knew we had started on the road to defeat when our great warrior Ariel (Arik) Sharon, invited Egypt back into the demilitarized Sinai Desert to protect Israel's borders. Only they didn't protect the borders but, rather acted as the enablers, to transport tonnage of weapons, explosives and the terrorists to utilize them. Egypt has always been a dedicated enemy of the Jews. Moses may have taken us out but, it was men like Sharon, Rabin, Peres and Olmert who are bringing us back under Egypt's influence. Hearing the slimy, ingratiating words of Olmert in his apology to Mubarak for killing the attacking terrorists, we can understand the contempt the Arabs have for the Jewish people. Wriggling and rolling around like a puppy, wetting himself in his excitement at meeting with high leaders seems typical of Olmert. Apologizing for an Israeli military squad returning fire in self-defense, killing their attackers in a firefight is about the lowest, disgusting display of sniveling we may have ever seen by someone mistakenly honored to be the top leader of Israel. Olmert has embarrassed the nation and shown his contempt for Israel's military. They were on a high risk patrol where they could be the ones killed instead of the terrorists. Would Mubarak have apologized to Olmert if the Egyptian security squad succeeded in killing the Israelis in that ambush? ....I think not. But Olmert, displaying his own cowardice under fire, burbled not only an apology to Mubarak but, he gushed that "sitting next to Mubarak was a very moving, personal experience". After you read the following, you may wonder why the Israeli Army doesn't simply hold a full court martial and ship Olmert to Elbe, that island where they stored Napoleon. This is the man who is supposed to lead and defend Israel and her people. Stupidity, cowardice, lack of ethics, no sense of honor, an un-Jew...Olmert fits this description to a T. We can only wait for Olmert's obsequious gestures and apologies to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hamas for Israel's existence. Once you have started apologizing for defending the Jewish State and her valiant troops, you have opened the city gates to invasion. This article below was written by Hillel Fendel, Senior News editor at Arutz-Shevah (www.IsraelNN.com). It appeared yesterday. |
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IDF officers are resentful of Prime Minister Olmert's apology to
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak for the recent incident in which two
Egyptian terrorists who shot at IDF forces were killed.
Olmert met with Mubarak in Sharm el-Sheikh yesterday, and his first statement in their joint press conference was an apology for the incident and a declaration of a joint investigation. "On behalf of the State of Israel," Olmert said,"I would like to express my deepest regret over the incident that occurred over the weekend in which two Egyptian security personnel were killed. We have initiated a joint committee to investigate the incident; we will consider its findings. Similarly, we have instructed our security and intelligence forces to cooperate on the issue and to make every effort to prevent a recurrence of such incidents in the future." Arutz-7's military correspondent Kobi Finkler says that IDF officers familiar with the area in which the incident took place are upset and offended by Olmert's apology. An IDF commanding officer at the scene described what happened: "Today [Friday] at around 6 AM, our forces stationed here [Mt. Saguy, close to the Israeli-Egyptian Negev-Sinai border] were attacked by a 3-man terrorist cell, which opened fire at them. They quickly took positions of cover, opened fire and killed two of the terrorists. We later found that the terrorists were dressed in uniforms of a foreign army, and were equipped with radios and Kalachnikov rifles, and undoubtedly crossed the border in order to attack our forces." An investigation shortly afterwards, with the participation of Southern District Command Chief Officer Gen. Yoav Galant, found that the terrorists had infiltrated 150 meters inside Israel, and were the first to fire in the gun battle in which they were killed. Nine magazines of bullets were also found alongside their bodies. A commanding officer in the region told Finkler, "Ever since the IDF left the Gaza Strip, we see an increasing phenomenon of terrorists who realize that the border with Gaza is closed nearly hermetically, and therefore try to infiltrate via Egypt and Sinai into Israel. We are catching increasingly high quantities of weapons and arms, and we can definitely say that this is something that must be addressed." MK Yuval Shteinitz (Likud), who chaired the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee from 2003-2006, told Arutz-7 today, "In general, we must stop our fawning and groveling before Egypt, whose behavior is the main cause of the massive smuggling of arms to Gaza. Egypt should apologize to us! 90% of all arms and explosives used in Judea, Samaria and Gaza for terrorism against us comes from Egypt. They are no different than Iran and Syria in their support for terrorism. Jordan succeeded in dealing with the arms smugglers, but Egypt somehow manages not to succeed in this." "But what interest would Egypt have," Arutz-7 asked, "in sending weapons to Gaza? It is widely assumed that Egypt, like Israel, is against Hamas and does not want it to gain strength." Shteinitz responded, "Who said so? I do not agree with this
supposition. Egypt is not against Hamas, but is rather responsible
for its growth in many ways."
Political analyst Dr. Aaron Lerner of
Olmert said at last night's press conference, "I see you, Mr.
President [Mubarak], as a true partner in the effort to bring peace
to our region... Your contribution is as vital as it was during the
successful implementation of the Disengagement Plan."
"I am very pleased by the cooperation between our countries in the
struggle against global terrorism... We have agreed to enhance
cooperation and coordination between us and between our countries on
this issue."
"...And lastly, permit me to take this opportunity to add something
personal that is not in the written statement. Mr. President, this
was a very moving personal experience for me to sit with you now for
approximately 1.5 hours, to hold talks and to listen to one of the
most experienced and important leaders that I have had the
opportunity of meeting with. Bilateral relations between Israel and
Egypt are very fundamental and very important to our world view and
to the network of relations that we want to build in the region, and
the leadership of Hosni Mubarak is an important key to the success of
this process."
Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel and Gamla. He is a member of the Board of Directors and a research associate of the Freeman Center For Strategic Studies (http://www.freeman.org/online.htm). Contact him at winstonmedia@comcast.net |
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OLMERT MUST COME TO HIS SENSES!
Posted by Lawrence Uniglicht, June 6, 2006. |
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Filthy Nazis slaughter six million Jews during The Holocaust, world leaders and others in the know watch! Six plus decades later, Israel's popularly elected Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, steward of a nation less than two tenths of one percent the size of surrounding mostly hostile Middle East Muslim neighbors, says he is willing to chat with the Muslim Arab Abu Mazen, a Holocaust trivializer, about ceding Israeli soil, justifiably secured in battle by Israel from Muslim Arabs in 1967, to other Muslim Arabs. Much of the "civilized" world, whose ancestors watched those six million Jews from afar being murdered yet did nothing, nods in agreement; many Jewish Israelis nod in agreement; much of the Jew-despising Muslim Arab world salivates; perceiving Israel as weak, only yearning to annihilate the entire Jewish homeland. What is wrong with this picture? Dr. Strangelove of the Middle East, Persian President AhMADinejad, declares Israel should be wiped off the map. His nuclear fuel enriching centrifuges continue to spin, the "civilized" world tells him he is a bad Muslim, yet continues to buy his oil thus fuels Iran's nuclear ambitions. What is wrong with that picture? We live in a dog eat dog oil-dependent dysfunctional world where genocide yet thrives, today in the Darfur region of oil-rich Sudan. Alas, Black African human blood remains thinner than the viscous vicious black gold saturating that dysfunctional State. Hollow memories of six million slaughtered Jewish human beings, as well as other slaughtered human beings, will not motivate "civilized" nations sufficiently to save today's Black African human beings in the process of being slaughtered. Yet, on this surrealistically sadistic planet, Olmert still proposes to trade land for peace, as if ceding most of Judea and Samaria to frothing Jew-despising Arabs will make descendants of Holocaust victims smile again and feel safe. Might this naïve Prime Minister someday soon, for the sake of the nation he serves, observe that no good deed (in the eyes of the world) goes unpunished; that ceding land will only embolden Islamic terrorists to launch more attacks against Israel; that survival of the fittest still applies in this twenty first century jungle world and no fit nation cedes its rightful territory unilaterally or through negotiations; that this species, bereft of soul, will not rescue hapless victims from butchery thus will surely not rescue Israel from self-inflicted folly. Lawrence Uniglicht is a career civil servant, working for the Social Security Administration. He advocates for the State of Israel with an American perspective. He writes, "Advocating for the disrespected underdog has been my passion, no doubt Israel falls into that category." Contact him by email at luniglicht@snip.net |
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THE PATH TO OUR DESTRUCTION
Posted by Unity Coalition for Israel, June 6, 2006. |
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This article was written by Caroline Glick and it appeared Jun 05, 2006 in The Jerusalem Post. |
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Allegedly spurred on by images of conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, and angered by what they saw as the mistreatment of Muslims at home, they became increasingly aggressive in their beliefs, according to media reports. This is how London's Sunday Telegraph explained the decision of 17 Canadian Muslims to stockpile three tons of ammonium nitrate and plot acts of war against their country. These men -- all Muslims -- who reportedly planned to blow up the headquarters of Canada's Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) in Toronto, are what Canadian officials refer to as "home-grown terrorists," and products of the "jihad generation." Before their arrests on Friday, they had never visited Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq or the Palestinian Authority. They chose the path of jihad in the streets and mosques of Toronto. They learned how to build bombs from the Internet. They trained for their mission in a training camp in Ontario. Like the Telegraph, most media reports claim that these men were prompted to wage a war against their country because they believe that their fellow Canadians are launching war against Islam. But why would they think this? Canadians are outspoken in their anti-Americanism. They have contributed generously to the Palestinians. It only took the Canadian government a few weeks after the Palestinian elections to announce it would fund a Hamas-led PA. Canadians overwhelmingly oppose the US-led war in Iraq and President George W. Bush. A Canadian Muslim friend who lives in Ontario told me recently that he has been unwelcome in his local mosque since the September 11 attacks on Washington and New York. His fellow Muslims have blackballed him because he made public statements critical of the hijackers and of al Qaida and the Palestinians and supportive of the US and Israel. He informed me that while in absolute numbers, mosque attendance in Canada has dropped since Sept. 11, those who continue to attend are fervent in their devotion to jihad against the Western world. That is, the Muslims who have been forced from the organized Canadian Muslim community are those who believe in Muslim integration in the West while those who remain within that community are radical separatists who cannot abide their pro-Western Muslim brethren. My friend and his fellow pro-Western Muslims are doubly ostracized. Not only are they rejected by their fellow Muslims who decry their denunciations of jihad, they are also rejected by the intellectual and cultural elites in their countries who insist on apologizing for jihadists in the name of multiculturalism and anti-racism. The depth of my friend's isolation was made clear this weekend when, in the wake of the arrests of the Canadian jihad cell, Luc Portelance, the CSIS assistant director of operations told his countrymen, "It is important to know that this operation in no way reflects negatively on any specific community, or ethno-cultural group in Canada." FOR ITS part, the Canadian Islamic Congress (whose leader, Mohamed Elmasry has openly stated his view that all Israeli citizens are legitimate targets for terrorist murder), attacked Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper for what it referred to as his decision to "paint today's arrests as a battle between 'us' and 'them.'" The CIC alleged that "Such statements put all Canadian Muslims in great danger," and demanded that the Canadian government fund "legitimate academic research to diagnose this serious social problem [of Canadian Muslims waging war against their country] and provide scientific solutions to it." Justifications for the actions of Western born and raised jihadists - and indeed for all jihadists from Osama bin Laden down -- like that published by the Telegraph are of course par for the course. As author Bruce Bower exhaustively demonstrates in his book While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within, there exists a unity of purpose between Islamic extremists and Western elites in Europe and throughout the world. Both sides wish to hide the fact that Islamists seek to dominate the Western world while painting the US and Israel as the greatest threats to international security. There seems to be no limit to the willingness of Western elites to justify jihadist acts of war against their societies. The Telegraph's apology for the Canadian jihadist terror group came at the same time as Britain's counter-terror forces were conducting a desperate search for a chemical bomb they fear was built by two British born terrorists who were also arrested on Friday in London. The fact that Britain's own jihadists were planning to attack Londoners with sarin gas made no dent in the Telegraph's willingness to make excuses for radical Islamic warriors. THIS PATTERN of collaborative dissimulation between leftist Western elites and jihadists manifested itself last week in Winnipeg, Canada. There, as the Ontario 17 steadily advanced their plans of war, Muslims in Manitoba launched an attack against a film that exposes the nature of the global jihad against the West. Last Monday and Tuesday the documentary film Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West launched its Canadian premiere in the city. (It will be premiering in Israel at Hebrew University on June 14.) Obsession, was produced by the media watch group Honest Reporting. It effectively shows the depth of the hatred and indoctrination to jihad that is taking place worldwide. Interweaving clips from Arab television, recordings of mosque incitement, interviews with extraordinarily brave Muslim heroes like The Jerusalem Post's Khaled Abu Toameh and renowned historians such as Sir Martin Gilbert, Professor Robert Wistrich, and Daniel Pipes, the film seeks to fill the void left by the Western media and academia to alert regular citizens to the reality of the threat that jihadist ideology presents to their freedom. In light of the film's purpose, (and having participated in the project and viewed the film several times, I can attest to its success), it is not surprising that the Muslim community in Winnipeg sought to have it banned. It is also not surprising that in reporting the protest, the Winnipeg Sun used the misleading headline, "Aspers sponsor hate film, say critics." Ahead of last week's screenings, members of the Winnipeg Muslim community filed a complaint about it with the city police's hate crimes unit. Shahina Siddiqui, the president of the Islamic Social Services Associations told the press, "I want the police to identify this as hate propaganda. I want them to be aware who the sponsors are and what they are doing." SO FOUR days before Friday's arrests, the Canadian Muslim community attempted to prevent Canadians from watching a film that explains why it is that Canadian born Muslims are trying to destroy their country. And four days before the arrests were made, the Winnipeg Sun maintained faith with its colleagues throughout the Western world by running a headline that gave its readers the sense that there was some legitimacy to the Muslims' complaint. And even though the apparent ringleader of the terror cell served as a prayer leader and a member of the board of directors of his local mosque, in the wake of Friday's arrests, Canadian and other Western commentators and editors continued to argue that the arrested terrorists bore no relationship to the larger Canadian Muslim community. It is against the backdrop of the refusal of Western elites to acknowledge the fact that there is a global jihad that the true danger of radical Islam becomes clear. Many argue that the forces of global jihad are no match for their enemies because they lack regular armies. Yet because of the defiant, irrational and immoral refusal of Western political, cultural and media elites to acknowledge the threat that internal and external jihadist forces manifest to the very notion of human freedom, they make it impossible for their societies to take measures to protect themselves. The Unity Coalition for Israel (http://www.israelunitycoalition.org) is "the largest worldwide coalition of Jewish and Christian organizations, with more than 200 groups representing millions of people dedicated to Israel. Though we have many different backgrounds, we have one common goal: A Safe and Secure Israel." "Israel is not just a Jewish issue. Millions of Christians resolutely endorse the principle of peace with security for the state of Israel. Because we work closely together and speak with a united voice, our message is being heard!" |
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MORE THAN JUST STORIES
Posted by Avodah 15, June 6, 2006. |
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This is Zohar, parashat Bahalotecha, page 152a; the translation and commentary are by Simcha Treiste. |
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(Rabbi Shimon said: "Woe to the person who says that the Torah comes to give instructions and tell descriptive stories and simple tales. If this were true, even in our own time we would be able to make "Torah" out of simple stories and praise and embellish them even better than all stories in the Torah. If the Torah came only to give instructions and tell the background history of the world, then even the ministers in the different governments of the world have stories that are more important and beneficial, from which one can learn wisdom and ethical behavior. If that were true we should learn their examples and make a Torah after their examples. Of course this is not the case. Every word in the Torah reflects higher wisdom and higher secrets.) Come and see. The spiritual world and the physical world are weighed in one balance [because everything in the spiritual world has its reflection in this world]. So Israel is Below and the heavenly forces are Above. It is written regarding the angels: "He makes His angels of spirit and his ministers of flames of fire." (Psalms 104:4) Now when these spiritual forces make a presence in This World, they have to take on the clothing of physicality. If they didn't appear in This World in appropriate form they couldn't survive in This World and This World would not be able to take their holiness and relate to them at all. Now you can understand why the narratives of the Torah are only the outer clothing of the Torah. Whoever thinks that this outer clothing is in fact the Torah and there is nothing underneath the clothing is spiritually backward and has no portion in the World to Come. So it was that King David begged, "Open my eyes, that I may see wondrous things in Your Torah." (Psalms 18:119) Come and see. There are clothes that stand out to everyone, and when stupid people see someone in beautiful clothing, they don't look any further. The body is more important than the clothes and more important than the body is the soul. In the same manner is the "body" of the Torah; these are the commandments that are called her "body". This body of Torah is dressed in stories from this world. The fools of this world only look at this outer clothing of stories. They don't delve into what is contained beneath the outer shell. Those who know better look into the body beneath the outer shell. The wise ones, servants of the Highest King, those who stood at Mount Sinai, see through to the soul of the Torah that is truly her essence and in the future will delve into the soul that is within the essence of the Torah. Contact Avodah 15 at avodah15@aol.com |
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THE PRISONERS' "PEACE" PLAN
Posted by Honest Reporting, June 6, 2006. |
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Much of the Western media has been referring to a document signed by Palestinian terrorists in Israeli jails as a breakthrough in the peace process. A New York Times headline "Palestinian Leader Plans a Vote on Accepting Israel" refers to Palestinian President Abbas' initiative to hold a referendum on the so-called "prisoners' plan" characterizing it as a "coexistence plan." The Times states: The proposal calls for a Palestinian state alongside Israel, based on the borders that existed before the 1967 Mideast war. That would include all of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, with a capital in East Jerusalem, and would accept the existence of Israel. The Times is not alone. The Daily Telegraph, the Washington Post, CNN, the Boston Globe, the BBC, and The Independent (and many others) all refer to this plan as one in which Israel is recognized and that territorial claims beyond the 1967 borders are dropped. Some even write that the plan rejects the use of violence or limits violence to the West Bank. WHAT THE PLAN SAYS However, the actual plan is quite different. The State of Israel is never even mentioned. While the first point refers to lands Israel occupied in 1967, it does not claim that these will be the territorial limits of a Palestinian state: The Palestinian people... seek to establish their independent state with al-Quds al-Shareef as its capital on all territories occupied in 1967 and to secure the right of return for the refugees and to liberate all prisoners and detainees... Does this mean that the plan accepts a two-state solution as much of the media claims? According to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy: There is no explicit statement in the accord that establishing a state within the pre-1967 borders would end Palestinian claims over Israeli territory. In fact, vagueness on two critical points of the document suggest that it can also be viewed as another iteration of the Palestinian Liberation Organization's (PLO) 1974 phased plan that declared a willingness to accept the establishment of a national authority in any part of historic Palestine as a step toward "completing the liberation of all Palestinian territory": The plan does not limit Palestinian claims, nor does it reject violence, either within pre-1967 Israel or elsewhere. While the media is currently drawing a great deal of attention to this plan based on Hamas' opposition to it, readers should point out to their local media that in reality, the plan breaks little new ground. WHO WROTE THE PLAN The Christian Science Monitor's description of the prisoners who wrote the plan as a "moderate and influential force" is typical of the way the media has been treating them. In reality, they are among the most dangerous terrorists in Israeli jails. They have been convicted of crimes including financing, planning and engaging in terror activities that have left a trail of victims: * Marwan Barghouti, Fatah-Tanzim leader, is serving five life sentences for attacks which left five people dead; Don't let your local media whitewash this "plan." Let them know that you expect them to report what the plan actually says and who wrote it, not what some believe might be "implied." Honest Reporting monitors the media for inaccuracy and unfairness in how they report the news about Israel. Ther website address is http://www.honestreporting.com. You can help support their research online or by sending contributions to: HonestReporting, 400 South Lake Drive, Lakewood, NJ 08701-3167. |
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DEMOGRAPHOBIA
Posted by Deb Kotz, June 6, 2006. |
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Very interesting report on the overestimation of the number of Palestinians living in the West Bank. Apparently, there's a huge discrepancy in the population numbers. According to the PA, there are 3.8 million Arabs living in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria). According to other surveys, there are only 2.6 million Arabs living there and the figure is shrinking as mass emigration occurs and the birth rate remains low. Sharon and Olmert relied on the 3.8 million figure to jusify the removal of Jews from these lands with the argument that the Arabs might soon outnumber the Jews destroying democracy in Israel. Apparently, that's not going to happen anytime soon. I find, though, that the argument itself is faulty. Israel cannot be a pure democracy and a Jewish state at the same time. What happens if the Arab Israelis come to outnumber the Jews? Will Israel then cease to be a Jewish state? On the other hand, why can't the Palestinians simply live in a commonwealth along the lines of, say, Puerto Rico? Do Americans worry that the population of Puerto Rico might soon expand to make Hispanics the majority of this country? Isn't that why Puerto Rico became what it was in the first place? Americans weren't ready to relinquish a hold on it but also didn't want to integrate it into the 51st state. Now about those plans for a security barrier along the Mexico border.... Feel free to laugh off my parallels as nonsense. Just some food for thought. This article was written by Yoram Ettinger, a consultant on US-Israel relations as well as the Chairman of Special Projects at the Ariel Center for Policy Research. Formerly the Minister for Congressional Affairs to Israel's Embassy in Washington, DC, Ettinger also served as Consul General of Israel to the Southwestern US. He is a former editor of Contemporary Mideast Backgrounder, and is the author of the Jerusalem Cloakroom series of reports. Contact him at yoramtex@netvision.net.il or go to http://yoramettinger.newsnet.co.il. |
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1. The May 2006 "BESA Perspectives" on Palestinian demography, published by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies is available on line: http://www.biu.ac.il/SOC/besa/perspectives15.html. [Editor's note: it can also be read by clicking here.] 2. DEMOGRAPHOBIA has succeeded -- more than Palestinian terrorism and more than US and global pressure -- to afflict Israel's policy-makers with weariness. However, Demographobia has been based on grossly erroneous data, as clearly exposed by the "BESA Perspectives" and by the February 2006 study published by BESA. Both documents were authored by Bennett Zimmerman, Dr. Roberta Seid and Dr. Michael Wise (www.biu.ac.il/Besa/mideast.html). 3. A 70% inflation in the number of Palestinians in Judea & Samaria has been documented, and corroborated, by data published by the Palestinian Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education and Election Commission. 4. A 67%:33% durable Jewish majority has prevailed in the Green Line and Judea & Samaria (60%:40% including Gaza) for 40 years, compared with an 8% minority in 1900, 33% in 1947 and 45% in 1949 (including Gaza). The long-term demographic trend bodes well for the Jewish majority. Palestinian birth rate declines systematically (as has been the case throughout Muslim and Arab societies), while net emigration has persisted since 1950. 5. A JEWISH DEMOGRAPHIC MOMENTUM has been in motion, as evidenced by the annual rise in Jewish births from 1995 (80,000) to 2004 (104,000), while the number of Arab birth (within the Green Line) has stagnated around 40,000 annually. Net positive Jewish migration (Aliya and returnees -- over 20,000 annually since 2001) has bolstered the Jewish Demographic Momentum. Jewish fertility rate has grown to 2.7 children per woman (highest in the industrialized world), while the Arab fertility rate has declined from 10 children per woman in the 1960s to 4 children in 2004. 6. A March 17, 2006 "Gallup" survey 7. Demographic Fatalism has misled Israel's policy-makers to assume that a retreat from Judea & Samaria geography (although J&S is indispensable security-wise) would save Jewish demography. In the process, Security Considerations -- which are essential for survival in the Mideast -- have been marginalized by Demographobia. Setting the record straight on demography, would resurrect steadfastness by Israel's policy-makers, and would reclaim the prominent role of Security Considerations in Israel's public debate on the future of Judea & Samaria. May we heed a lesson of this week's portion of the Torah (Be'Ha'alotkha) and of Maimonedes (whose marble replica is featured at the House Chamber on Capitol Hill): Weariness is a prescription for oblivion and should not be tolerated. Yoram PS: The term Demographobia was coined by Harry Horowitz, the founder of the Menachem Begin Heritage Foundation. Deb Kotz is an active member of the Brandeis Chapter of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) and maintains an email list to distribute articles of interest to the local community. She can be reached at DebKotz@aol.com |
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